Reform just revealed its plan to tackle poverty is to deny it exists

If you’re wondering how Reform plan to tackle poverty, we now have an answer to that. The plan is to deny it even exists

Zia Yusuf claims that "real poverty does exist in this country."
@TrevorPTweets challenges Reform UK's head of policy on his comments ⬇️#TrevorPhillipshttps://t.co/LFPXoeri6h pic.twitter.com/lqN76RkQ1q

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 15, 2026

Denial

In the clip above, Zia Yusuf says:

So firstly, it’s really important people understand when the term poverty is used primarily by left-wing politicians, let’s define that term. It is… a relative term, which means that you could literally – this is a mathematical fact – you could increase everybody’s incomes tenfold and that statistic would stay the same.

Oh my god, shut the fuck up, you oily, little nerd.

‘I can tell you mathematically what poverty is‘.

You sound like a Star Trek android, and not the good one.

We can tell you what poverty is, Zia, because most of us here at the Canary have experienced it.

Poverty is not having enough to get by.

Poverty is watching your outgoings outpace your incomings.

Poverty is spending hours a week figuring out how to make the money go around.

Poverty is constantly worrying about bills and life choices.

Poverty is fear and anxiety.

Poverty is the feeling that things will only get worse.

Yusuf thinks it’s a mathematical equation, because he has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about; he’s just another ex-Tory, ex-Goldman Sachs rich boy who wants to gut the welfare state to give his billionaire mates handouts.

Too much will never be enough for these people.

They will take more than they can ever spend, and they will shit, and piss, and moan as they bite the hand that feeds them.

Yusuf continued:

But the most important thing is that Reform, we are fiscally prudent, and we wanted to make sure anything we announced was going to be fiscally neutral.

“Fiscally prudent”, is it?

If you’re familiar with Curb Your Enthusiasm, start imagining the end credits now as you read the following headlines:

• Reform grifters charging candidates £250 to stand as MP.
• ‘Simply making it up’ — Reform-led council invented supposed £40m saving.
• Reform called out for spaffing £600k on eight parking spots for councillors.

Reform have totally let the cat out of the bag about who they are.

Zia Yusuf lecturing that poverty and peoples everyday struggles with rising bills and rent is exaggerated.

A party of the failed status quo, funded and representing big corporate interests. https://t.co/G000aCvbLl

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 15, 2026

Social bullshittery

Phillips asked Yusuf if poverty measures are all made up, to which Yusuf responded:

No, it’s worse than that, because real poverty does exist in this country, Trevor. And absolute poverty does exist in very, very small pockets. If you actually want to do the right thing for as many people as possible in this country, then you need to create social mobility. That has been crushed by the Tory government and now this Labour government.

To be clear, ‘social mobility’ is not the phenomenon in which everyone becomes more affluent. It’s the phenomenon in which some working class people land middle class jobs. This is great for sly politicians like Yusuf, because it allows them to point at the fortunate few and say:

See – it is possible for you layabouts to earn more — anyone on poverty wages is just lazy.

If you’re old enough, you will remember the UK’s middle class did indeed expand in the 90s. Social mobility was happening on a larger scale, and we got the ‘lower middle class’ — i.e. working class families who could afford to alternate between taking their kids on holiday to Menorca and Butlin’s Pwllheli (if that seems oddly specific, I’m talking from experience).

This phenomenon happened because we took advantage of the cheap labour of countries like China, allowing us to live beyond our previous means. We could have locked in that progress, and ensured the country’s wealth was evenly distributed. We didn’t do that; instead we got runaway capitalism, with the rich claiming more wealth and authority, and the rest of us losing our rights and purchasing power.

Now, we’re at a point where social mobility can’t happen because even the middle class are fucking struggling. Tinkering around the edges or making savings here or there won’t cut it; we need to hobble the billionaire class, and we need to rob them of their power and influence.

Only then can we have a society in which people can live day to day without dreading tomorrow.

Bootstrapping

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps‘, but did you know where it comes from? As Useless Etymology report:

The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century. It’s attributed to a late-1800s physics schoolbook that contained the example question “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?”

So when it became a colloquial phrase referring to socioeconomic advancement shortly thereafter, it was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.

It’s literally impossible for everyone in a capitalist system to be well off and content, because it’s a tornado designed to pull everything up to the top.

In other words, beware of geeks bearing false grifts.

Featured image via the Canary