"I think your party especially isn’t giving me much to be proud of"
The BBC Question Time audience applauded a young woman who criticised Reform’s immigration policy during a discussion about British values and national pride.
Reform’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, claimed that successive governments had “not been willing to stand up for the national interest”, adding that polling had found a majority of “Gen Zers” question whether they would fight for this country.
In response, the young woman said she was proud to be British, but then challenged Yusuf, saying “I don’t appreciate Zia, you mentioning Gen Z, assuming, calling out that you don’t think Gen Z have pride in Britain, I really think they do.”
She then said: “I think your party especially isn’t giving me much to be proud of. The way that your party discriminates or attempts to discriminate against people.”
The young woman said that she had been reading about Reform’s policies before the show, and noted: “The first four listed are all about immigration, all about trying to change diversity, which is what makes Britain great.”
The woman’s intervention was met with applause from the audience.
Yusuf later responded to the young woman’s points, saying that “the first four points in our manifesto or on our policy website at the moment are indeed about immigration”.
He said that according to YouGov polling immigration is the number one issue for British people, and that it was causing “the erosion” of British culture.
Yusuf said that this was why Reform is “leading by 10 points in the average of the polls right now”.
While the YouGov survey found that while Tory and Reform voters selected immigration as the biggest issue, Lib Dem, Labour and Green voters identified the cost-of-living as their biggest concern.
The BBC has come under fire for hosting Reform’s Zia Yusuf on the show six times in just 16 months. Yusuf has appeared on the debate show more than the Green Party as a whole.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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