Nadhim Zahawi declared Shinzo Abe’s death four hours before it was confirmed, causing competitors to rejoice that the Tory MP’s campaign for No. 10 is already ‘falling apart.’
For sending the tweet while the former Japanese premier was in serious care after being shot at a campaign rally, the new Chancellor was called “hapless” and “despicable.”
Abe, 67, was shot at around 11.30 a.m. local time in the city of Nara, which is close to Osaka in western Japan, while addressing a gathering outside the railway station. Abe has been Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, having served in that position twice, from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2020.
After missing the first shot, a shooter brandishing what seemed to be a handmade gun fired twice before striking Mr. Abe in the back and having the bullet exit his chest.
He was reported as having “no vital signs” and was “in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest,” which is a term frequently used in Japan to describe someone who has passed away but has not yet been formally proclaimed dead.
At around 6am UK time Mr Zahawi tweeted: ‘Heartbreaking news from Japan. PM Shinzo Abe has died after being shot by an attacker. We enter politics to serve and try and make the world a better place, a good man has lost his life in pursuit of that noble aim. May he rest in eternal peace’.
However, a half-hour later, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed hope that his predecessor would survive the murder attempt while stating that his condition remained critical in the hospital.
Mr. Zahawi finally withdrew his social media post two hours after Mr. Abe’s younger brother stated that the man was still struggling and receiving a blood transfusion to save his life.
At 10am, Japanese media reported he died, prompting him to tweet again: ‘Today’s news from Japan is heartbreaking. We enter politics to serve and to try and make the world a better place. Shinzo Abe has lost his life in pursuit of that noble aim. May he rest in eternal peace’.
The error made by Mr. Zahawi is yet another hiccup in his campaign, which some have asserted started months ago.
He was charged with dishonesty yesterday night for promising to back Boris Johnson while secretly considering running for the leadership.
The revelation that Mr. Zahawi had been secretly planning to become prime minister for months with Sir Lynton Crosby’s associates infuriated Johnson supporters.
They also perceived treachery in the Chancellor’s letter requesting that Mr. Johnson resign, which was sent just 36 hours after he had accepted the PM’s offer of promotion from Education Secretary to the Treasury to take the position of Rishi Sunak.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a supporter of Mr. Johnson, also attacked Mr. Sunak, calling him a “not very successful chancellor” and mocking his attempts to combat inflation. It increases the possibility that the PM’s supporters may attempt to thwart the leadership aspirations of two of the more capable contenders.
Last night, one Johnson ally told the Daily Mail: ‘Nadhim Zahawi has been utterly duplicitous. On Wednesday night, he was telling everyone: Me and Boris are going to fight this together.
‘Then he comes out with that letter. His treachery hasn’t gone down well. Today he walked up to a group of Cabinet ministers… and they totally blanked him.’
The multi-millionaire married father-of-three was promoted to Chancellor after he threatened to quit the Cabinet if he was not given the job.
Mr Zahawi – worth up to £100 million – defended the PM on the airwaves on Wednesday morning, but by that evening was in No 10 privately telling Mr Johnson it was time to go. Yesterday morning, he went public with his call for the Prime Minister to quit, saying the country ‘deserves a Government that is not only stable, but which acts with integrity’.
Mr Zahawi, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock were among MPs brushing shoulders with media big wigs at political magazine the Spectator’s summer party.
Suspected shooter Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a military veteran, was tackled by security and arrested at the scene on suspicion of the attempted murder of Mr Abe – with police also confiscating what appeared to be a homemade firearm.
Witnesses reported hearing two shots while Abe was making a campaign speech ahead of Sunday’s election for the parliament’s upper house. He then collapsed holding his chest, with his shirt smeared with blood.
Fumio Kishida, the current prime minister of Japan, called the shooting ‘absolutely unforgivable’ and said he is ‘praying’ that Abe survives.
It was a stunning development in a country with famously low levels of violent crime and tough gun laws, involving Japan’s best-known politician.
‘Former prime minister Abe was shot at around 11:30 am,’ in the country’s western region of Nara, chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.
‘One man, believed to be the shooter, has been taken into custody. The condition of former prime minister Abe is currently unknown.
‘Whatever the reason, such a barbaric act can never be tolerated, and we strongly condemn it,’ Matsuno added.
The suspected gunman, who was tackled at the scene and arrested, is a former soldier who was in the Japanese self-defense forces and appears to have built the improvised weapon used in the shooting, Radio 4 reported.
Several Ministry of Defense officials confirmed that Yamagami had been working for the Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years until around 2005.
It was reported that Abe had his security team around him during the speech on Friday, but the attacker was able to pull this gun out and shoot him at close range ‘without being checked.’
The former leader had been delivering a stump speech at an event ahead of Sunday’s upper house elections when the sound of gunshots was heard, NHK and the Kyodo news agency said.
Gambling man Nadhim Zahawi was yesterday betting on the Tory party and the public forgiving him for standing by Boris Johnson and becoming Chancellor – and then delivering the fatal blow to his premiership all in 24 hours.
The Tory MP, a multi-millionaire married father-of-three, went from being Boris Johnson’s saviour to his assassin in the space of a day amid claims he has been secretly preparing his leadership campaign for months with the help of the PM’s own election guru.
One politics watcher described his actions over the past 24 hours as: ‘Caligula-esque sh*thousery’.
It is another calculated bet for the Tory MP whose risk taking in business has seen him compared to Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses and a contestant trying to impress Lord Sugar on The Apprentice.
But Peter Kellner, his former senior colleague at polling giant YouGov, the company Mr Zahawi founded and made millions from, said today: ‘My old friend, who I worked with for 10 years, has made a serious mistake – you do not chain yourself to a sinking ship’.
Political commentator Joe Murphy wrote in the Evening Standard: ‘In the end it took a politician as ruthless and ambitious as Boris himself to deliver the coup de grace’ and that the PM, who himself took down Theresa May, will understand ‘the brutal political necessity for Zahawi to commit regicide’.
The 55-year-old Tory MP’s rise is extraordinary given he arrived in Britain aged nine as a Kurdish refugee from Iraq after fleeing Saddam Hussein with his family and not speaking any English. He went on to make a fortune founding polling firm YouGov and building a £100million property portfolio.
Mr Zahawi was dramatically promoted from Education Secretary to Chancellor late on Tuesday night after Rishi Sunak quit. And he publicly defended the Prime Minister after being put in charge of the Treasury to firm up the Tory leader’s position.
But just a few hours later Mr Zahawi was joining other former loyalists at No 10 in trying to persuade Mr Johnson to quit and yesterday morning pulled the plug, telling the PM publicly to ‘do the right thing and go now’. Minutes later it emerged that the Prime Minister had finally agreed to resign because he had no Chancellor willing to back him.
On Wednesday night it was claimed that he has been secretly preparing a Tory leadership campaign with close allies of election guru Sir Lynton Crosby, the Australian strategist credited with winning Boris multiple elections.
The Chancellor has reportedly spent months working on plans that include proposals to cut corporation tax and VAT. Boris Johnson’s ex-strategist Mark Fullbrook is running the campaign, according to The Times. The plan is apparently ready to put into action and Mr Zahawi was prepared to resign this week if he had not been made Chancellor.
Friends have said that Mr Zahawi’s ‘real blood and passion was politics’ – but before being elected as Tory MP for Stratford-Upon-Avon MP in 2010 he dedicated himself to making a ‘f**k load of money’. Another friend in Parliament said: ‘He’s a sort of lovable wheeler-dealer type’, adding there is ‘a bit of Del Boy about him’.
Mr Zahawi, a married father-of-three, said on Wednesday he was backing Boris Johnson because he is ‘dedicated to the country that gave me everything’ – and denied he is bolstering his own personal ambition to be Prime Minister. But others have claimed otherwise.
It has never been plain sailing for the senior Tory. An early venture as a young entrepreneur, selling Teletubbies clothing at the height of the show’s fame, went bust and backers including former Tory grandee Jeffrey Archer, lost their money.
But he would become one of the richest politicians in the House of Commons after he helped found YouGov with friend Stephan Shakespeare having studied chemical engineering at University College London.
In 2002 he took a gamble on ITV’s Pop Idol – the biggest show on TV at the time – that would make him even more money in a story friends use to explain his mindset in business and now politics.
Before the final between Will Young and Gareth Gates, the pundits were convinced that it would be Gates that would romp home.
But YouGov polling said otherwise, and he put thousands of pounds on Will Young to win, which he did, allowing the Chancellor to beat the bookies and pundits and makes a fortune.
Former YouGov head of political research Joe Twyman told Politico: ‘It tells you a lot about him. He really believed what we were doing was right, he was willing to take the risk, he enjoyed the showmanship and the fun of it all — but also he wanted to make f*** load of money.’
Not only did Nadhim win the bet, he also used to push YouGov’s credibility and three years later he is said to have made £5.7million when it floated.
One senior government figure said Zahawi as a calculated risk-taker – a claim made yesterday as he decided to back Boris Johnson with his leadership in peril.
‘He isn’t reckless. He makes sure the odds are in his favor before he makes a bet’, the insider said.
Former YouGov President Peter Kellner has said he would have made a ‘perfect’ contestant for TV game show The Apprentice, if the show starring Lord Sugar had existed in the 1980s and 1990s.
‘He was very sharp and shrewd in business terms’, he said, adding it was no surprise that he was a success as Vaccines Minister in the pandemic because ‘in a sense, the vaccine job is like an Alan Sugar challenge writ very large’.
He is now one of the favourites to replace Boris Johnson. Friend Tobias Ellwood, a sharp critic of Mr Johnson, has long said he would support him if he stands for leader.
He told Politico: ‘Too many people have got responsibility in Cabinet that arguably shouldn’t be there, given the changing environment from December 2019 to where we are today.
‘His promotion [to Education Secretary] recognises that we have high-calibre people within the ranks of parliament with skill sets that can and should be tapped into’.
Mr. Zahawi received a private education at University College London and King’s College School in West London, where he majored in chemical engineering.
One of the richest members of Congress, he later established the successful polling company YouGov and was named “entrepreneur of the year” by Ernst & Young.
His real estate empire is estimated to be worth £100 million.
The father of three was elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 and became the first Kurdish Iraqi to do so.
Before entering politics, Zahawi later served as Lord Archer’s assistant.
He initially supported Dominic Raab for Conservative Party Leader in 2019, but has subsequently switched his allegiance to Mr. Johnson.
From January 2018 to July 2019, he served as the children’s minister; at that time, he went to the contentious Presidents Club Ball.
After reports of harassment and sexism at the all-male event for the business elite, he allegedly received a reprimand from the chief whip.
He was made to apologise for using taxpayer funds to heat his stables on his Warwickshire estate during the MPs expenses controversy.
After using a legal loophole to conceal his total earnings the previous year, Mr. Zahawi came under new scrutiny regarding his income from side jobs.
From 2015 until he became a minister, the new chancellor made more than £1.3 million from his employment with Gulf Keystone, which is listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange.
However, the amount of money he has made from side employment since becoming an MP in 2010 is unknown because he channelled it through the consultancy Zahawi and Zahawi, which he founded with his wife Lana before to winning the 2010 election for the Stratford seat.