They use artificial intelligence tools to go through public data and hunt for savings with a focus on fraud, procurement and areas of spending which Reform views as a waste of public cash. Think taxis to take children to school, money for asylum seekers and spending on management consultants, which Yusuf calls a “gravy train.”
“Most of these people have not been politically active,” Yusuf says of the DOGE team. “It’s patriotism. It’s people who can see the way the state is being run has gotten worse and felt quite helpless to be able to do anything about it. For the first time, they can see something which has got some political teeth.”
Government prep
Yusuf talks a lot about the amount of money spent on social care. But it’s a service councils in England have a statutory duty to provide, meaning there is little DOGE can do to cut it. Despite these restrictions, he views DOGE’s work with local councils as a useful testing ground.
“We want to look at the way in which councils actually go about providing these services … It is helping us with the work that we’re doing in terms of our national policy platform, so that we can arrive in government and quite quickly start to implement these changes and tear down the blockages that are preventing, for example, local government from providing these services,” he says.
The former investment banker became a multimillionaire in 2023 after selling the concierge app Velocity Black, which he co-founded, to Capital One for £233 million. A former Conservative supporter, Yusuf switched to Reform in 2024 and has since set about trying to broaden the party’s appeal ahead of the next general election. But Yusuf says his current task to cut local budgets down to size is just as important.
“If Britain doesn’t sort this out, then the IMF [International Monetary Fund] will force it to,” he argues. “The country is on a fast track to bankruptcy. The country is in a doom loop where the people with the broadest shoulders in terms of tax are fleeing the country. The pie isn’t growing in terms of revenue and so all of that’s going to be shouldered by the next wealthiest people. Predominantly, these are working people. There’s a real urgency about this. That’s my motivation.”
