He told friends his affairs were in pristine order ... they weren’t

WITHIN minutes of Nadhim Zahawi unleashing his extraordinary resignation letter yesterday morning, Tory MPs were dissecting it on their private WhatsApp groups in disbelief and astonishment.

Zahawi expressed no remorse, failed to admit any wrongdoing and pointedly included no apology for his conduct, seeking to blame others for his mistakes.

Cabinet ministers who had privately conceded for days that the Tory party chairman was finished were taken aback by the letter’s unrepentant tone and the attempt to dodge all responsibility.

‘Where is the humility?’ demanded one minister when I spoke to them yesterday. ‘I can’t recall such a graceless Cabinet resignation letter. Nadhim’s obviously concluded there’s no coming back, and there can’t be after that outburst.’

Under mounting pressure to limit the ongoing damage he was causing the Government, Zahawi finally saw his fate sealed at 7am yesterday when Rishi Sunak, from the comfort of his Georgian mansion in his Yorkshire constituency, received the report of ministerial ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus into Zahawi’s conduct.

The conclusion was devastating. ‘I consider that Mr Zahawi... has shown insufficient regard for the General Principles of the Ministerial Code... Mr Zahawi’s conduct as a minister has fallen below the high standards that, as Prime Minister, you rightly expect from those who serve in your Government.’

The PM phoned Zahawi – and sacked him then and there.

Blessed with abundant selfbelief – bordering at times on obstinacy – Zahawi was never going to jump before he was pushed. ‘ He’s not made that way,’ said one admirer yesterday. ‘ He’s more thick- skinned than a herd of rhinos. Rishi was always going to have to kick him out of the Cabinet.’

It’s perhaps one of the most precipitous falls from grace in modern political history. Just a few short months ago, until he was undone after he was exposed trying to cover up his murky dealings with the tax authorities, Zahawi seriously believed he could be prime minister one day. Many of his allies agreed.

Yesterday, the mood at Conservative Party HQ was downbeat, with more sorrow at the loss of a talented colleague than anger at his selfinflicted disgrace.

Worst of all, his predicament could have been avoided. When he announced in July that he was running for the Tory leadership, several friends urged him to go through his financial affairs line by line to ensure there was no smoking gun.

His personal wealth has been estimated at as much as £100million, including a large property empire, making his a significant scalp for any enemy of the Tories to claim.

A friend of his says: ‘ We told him until we were blue in the face to ensure he was absolutely squeaky- clean. We knew his huge wealth would be an obvious target for journalists and opposition MPs. He insisted there was nothing to worry about and that his financial affairs were in pristine order. They clearly weren’t. He was running for the Tory leadership at the very time HMRC was looking into his affairs: he must have known it would come out.’ The same friend said Zahawi had further damaged his reputation by hopelessly soldiering on. ‘If he had asked those same friends for advice, we would have said resign now. Instead, he’s been a dead man walking for weeks.’

NOW Sunak will have to make do without him. Comfortable in front of a camera, articulate and unflappable, Zahawi will be badly missed by a Government increasingly short of media bighitters. He was set to be a key figure both in the run-up to May’s local elections – expected to be painful for the Tories – and next year’s expected general election.

After all, his talents have long been obvious. As Covid vaccines minister between November 2020 and September 2021, he was responsible for overseeing the Government’s much-lauded jabs roll-out, which saved thousands of lives. He called it ‘the most important job I’ll ever do’ – and his popularity soared.

That, along with his cool performance in interviews, persuaded Sunak to make him party chairman, charged with drumming up donations for the next election. Zahawi was the first chairman in years who actually wanted the normally thankless job. Ever the plotter, he intended to use it to build a power base among party members, with a view to one day running for the leadership himself.

He proved adept at handling big donors, whose largesse will be vital if the Tories are to match Labour’s millions from the trade unions. Several key benefactors, and the rock star Rod Stewart, have recently taken their allegiances elsewhere after the ousting of Boris Johnson and the unedifying debacle of Liz Truss’s premiership.

But it all began to go wrong for Zahawi, of course, in July last year, when newspapers started to raise questions about his tax affairs. Instead of admitting HMRC had indeed investigated him, Zahawi branded the reports a ‘smear’ and employed aggressive lawyers to threaten journalists with legal action for publishing the claims. He threatened one newspaper three times when asked for his response to inquiries by the National Crime Agency and HMRC, an outrageous thing to do given his senior role in Government.

Lawyers acting on his behalf also sent letters to Dan Neidle, a solicitor and Labour Party activist, who spent months on his own investigation into the former chancellor.

At Prime Minister’s questions earlier this month, the PM stoutly defended his wayward chairman. Days later, Zahawi made his boss look utterly foolish when he confirmed in a statement that he had paid a penalty to HMRC after the Revenue found what he called a ‘careless and not deliberate’ error.

Sunak will not forgive him easily for that. Yet as recently as the beginning of last week, Zahawi was still nursing the forlorn hope that a Chequers ‘away day’ last Thursday might mark the turning point in his battle to keep his job.

He had been due to make one of the main presentations to his fellow ministers, plotting the uphill path to a victory at the next general election. Instead, he was brutally sidelined.

While the gathering was under way, HMRC chief Jim Harra was giving evidence to a committee of MPs, and fatally undermined Zahawi’s defence that his fine was the result of a simple mistake. ‘There are no penalties for innocent errors in your tax affairs,’ Harra said.

BY the time Zahawi concluded the Chequers session, every minister had read the words of the HMRC chief. They knew he was done for.

It all marks a dispiriting end to what had been an inspirational career. Zahawi did not follow the usual trajectory for a wouldbe party leader.

Born in 1967 in Baghdad to an influential Kurdish family – his grandfather was the governor of the Bank of Iraq and appeared on the country’s currency – the Zahawis ultimately fled Iraq having fallen foul of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The young Nadhim arrived in Britain unable to speak English. He grew up in Sussex and went on to study chemical engineering at University College London, before following in his father’s footsteps and becoming an entrepreneur, finally being voted in as the first Iraqi Kurdish MP.

‘ I have lived the British dream,’ he has said. ‘I came here at 11. I learned to read and speak the language and dream the language.’

Today, as he surveys the wreckage of his political career, Zahawi surely recognises that his other great dream – to become prime minister – now lies in tatters.