Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sacks Nadhim Zahawi, chairman of the British Conservative Party

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If you think prime ministers are setting an example for the rest of their colleagues, then it’s no surprise that an administration run for three years by a one-man moral minefield like Boris Johnson is showing more than its fair share of ethical lapses, said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

A veteran Labor politician, Bridget Phillipson, told the BBC on Sunday that Mr Sunak had been too weak to fire Mr Zahawi early, despite long-standing questions about his finances. The reason it continues, she said, is that we have a government whose only principle is party first, country second.

Mr Zahawi’s political survival had been in doubt for weeks, ever since it was revealed that while he was chancellor he was being investigated by tax and customs authorities for unpaid taxes. In a January 21 statement, Zahawi said the tax authority called it a careless and unintentional error.

But Mr Magnus said in his report that Mr Zahawi erred in not disclosing the investigation into his taxes when he became Chancellor. He should have acknowledged, Mr. Magnus wrote, that this was a serious matter that needed to be declared a conflict of interest before he could accept a government post.

Another senior minister, Michael Gove, told the BBC on Sunday that neither Mr Sunak nor his predecessor, Liz Truss, knew enough about Mr Zahawi’s tax problems to conclude he could not serve. as minister.

The dismissal of Mr Zahawis brings an abrupt end to the career of one of the Conservative Party’s most distinctive rising stars. Born in Baghdad to a Kurdish family, Mr Zahawi came to Britain aged 11 when his parents fled the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. A chemical engineer by training, he co-founded a highly successful market research company, YouGov, before entering politics as MP for Stratford-on-Avon in central England.

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