Now Sunak must remove the whip from Zahawi

We should demand high standards in public life. Zahawi has not only fallen below them – but worse, refuses to accept he has

Should Nadhim Zahawi have the Conservative whip removed from him? Isn’t that just kicking a man when he’s down – including about £5m down to the taxman, as it happens?

Usually, such an additional sanction, on top of losing his ministerial role and party chairmanship, (and the five million quid) would be considered an almost sadistic sanction. But in the case of Zahawi, well, from what I have seen so far, he’s going the right way about getting it.

He’s continuing to spin the line that he’s been victimised, and he is thus dragging his party into disrepute, as well as making an even bigger fool of himself. Maybe he was once an asset to his party; now he appears to be becoming a major liability.

As if to prove why Rishi Sunak was right, at long last, to sack Zahawi, it’s rumoured that the former chancellor is weighing up whether to publish a formal response to the Laurie Magnus report into whether he broke the ministerial code. Apparently, Zahawi is “furious”, and feels he was denied the chance to make his case properly during a half-hour interview with Magnus.

It reinforces the impression he gave all along in public, and again in Zahawi’s post-dismissal letter to the prime minister: that he feels he’s done nothing much wrong, and therefore has nothing to apologise for, to anyone. Just a bit of carelessness. In his earlier statement last week about the tax penalty, he implied he paid up just because he wanted to close the argument down get on with his political work. It doesn’t looks like he is going to accept blame.

If sincere in his indignation, then Zahawi is quite simply deluded. The facts, as the lawyers say, are not in doubt. Zahawi was penalised by HMRC for being “careless” about his taxes – a more serious matter than it sounds – and he paid up. Whether HMRC was right or wrong, that’s all anyone needs to know.

That in itself was a good reason not to appoint him to high office in the first place, and perfectly sufficient grounds to relieve him of his responsibilities. Many a minister has left government for far less than than that.

But based on recent events, Zahawi seems to be compounding his “mistakes” – not least his lack of transparency and attempts to bully the media – by refusing to accept his punishment and acknowledge his errors of judgement. Indeed he still cannot resist a jibe at the press for breaking the story in the first place.

Zahawi seems to be a man so consumed by pride that he cannot begin to see how foolish he is making himself look. Everyone, it seems, is out to get him – the press, HMRC, the prime minister, Sir Laurie Magnus. Maybe he looks askance at his fine horses in their heated stables and wonders if they’re part of the conspiracy too, the ungrateful nags.

If Zahawi had done what politicians find it so difficult to do and admitted that he fouled up, before dedicating himself to dull, good works on the backbenches and the wider community, then maybe he might have put himself on the long road to rehabilitation.

There are others who have made unlikely political comebacks, after all: Cecil Parkinson, another former party chair, for example. Also more recently Priti Patel, sacked by Theresa May, then later reinstated by Boris Johnson. Instead, Zahawi just won’t let it go, and his resentment is becoming embarrassing and damaging to the party as it approaches the general election.

It’s sometimes claimed that losing the whip is to do with what people do in parliament, and that Zahawi was instead fired over a ministerial matter. But is that really true?

The last two Tory MPs to lose the whip were Matt Hancock and Andrew Bridgen. Hancock went on I’m a Celebrity for money and absented himself from parliament. Bridgen sent out an offensive Tweet. Bridgen is now taking Hancock to court for libel, which does make it feel like the Tories are now eating themselves.

Both men, it’s fair to say, were thought by party managers to be damaging the reputation of the Conservatives. The same must also be true of Zahawi, and the more he drags out the agony of his sacking, the more likely he’ll lose the whip and be unable to stand as a Tory candidate in Stratford-upon-Avon at the next general election (even assuming his local association would continue to have him).

There’s a wider, almost moral point, too: is Zahawi worthy enough, honourable enough, virtuous enough to be a Conservative MP? No giggling at the back, please.

We should demand high standards in public life. Zahawi has fallen below them – but, and here's the point – refuses to accept he has. At least Hancock could claim it was "love", and Bridgen could claim to be "speaking out" on principle. Zahawi doesnt appear to have any excuses.

So I think we can stop feeling sorry for Zahawi now (if anyone’s tempted to sympathise with his self-inflicted fall). He is worth in excess of £100m, which must be some consolation to him in his current travails. He lives in some considerable comfort in magnificent homes.

He has his money, his horses and his family. He has his health as well as the freedoms that fabulous wealth brings. He has also, despite everything, done things in his life to be immensely proud of – managing Britain’s highly successful Covid vaccine roll-out chief among them.

As far as can be judged, he still has his pride; but that, really, has been the problem all along.