In 2010, Zairil joined the DAP, a leading party in opposition to the UMNO-led national government. The choice — given that his father was a prominent UMNO politician and that he would be a rare Malay member of the DAP — attracted significant attention. He claimed that UMNO had changed for the worse since his father was a politician, and that "after more than 50 years of rule, the situation is such that people are being colonised, oppressed by our own people, we do not have any freedom." He was appointed Political Secretary to DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng on 23 February 2011. At the DAP National Congress in December 2012, Zairil was elected to the Central Executive Committee and appointed as the Assistant National Publicity Secretary. The election was re-run in 2013, after a tabulation error that had resulted in his exclusion. He was successful again the second time around. In November 2017, Zairil was once again re-elected into the CEC and re-appointed as the Assistant National Publicity Secretary.
DAP Penang
In 2013, Zairil was elected into the DAP Penang State Committee and subsequently appointed Vice-Chairman. In the 2015 state party convention, he was reelected into the committee, placing third highest out of the fifteen elected members with a total vote of 490 out of 760 delegates. He was reappointed Vice-Chairman.
Penang Institute
From 2012 to 2016, Zairil headed the Penang Institute, a public policy think tank to the State Government of Penang. Zairil has been in the forefront of co-ordinating most of its major activities in propagating the cause of Penang on the national and international arenas, and providing realistic solutions for the economic and social sustenance of the people of the Penang region Under his leadership, the Institute organised the ASEAN Coalition for Clean Governance. The inaugural conference was held in June 2012, attracting participants from seven countries around the region. In March 2014, Zairil was promoted to the post of Executive Director and continued to hold this post until December 2016, when he stepped down to take over the reins of the Football Association of Penang. He has since been appointed as a Senior Fellow of Penang Institute.
Member of Parliament
During the 13th General Elections of Malaysia, Zairil won the Bukit Bendera parliamentary seat polling 45,591 votes defeating Barisan National candidate with 32,778 majority. One of the highest majorities won during the elections. He was also the youngest candidate to win a Parliamentary seat during the elections.
In the 14th General Election in 2018, Zairil was fielded in the state constituency of Tanjong Bunga where he faced off against Barisan Nasional Penang Chairman Teng Chang Yeow. Considered one of the more challenging seats due to controversies involving the former DAP State Assemblyman for Tanjong Bunga who had quit the party, Zairil went on to beat Teng by a majority of 9,343, nearly doubling the previous majority. Following his defeat, Teng announced his retirement from politics.
Penang State Executive Councillor
With Pakatan Harapan emerging victorious in the 14th General Election, former Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng was appointed the Malaysian Minister of Finance while DAP Penang Chairman Chow Kon Yeow took over the reins as Chief Minister of Penang. A new Penang State Cabinet was formed, with Zairil being appointed as the Penang State Executive Councillor for Public Works, Utilities and Flood Mitigation.
Election results
Publications
Zairil was a columnist for the now-defunct news portal, The Malaysian Insider, from 2011 until its closure in 2016. He currently writes regularly for The Penang Monthly. In 2017, he published his first book, Finding Malaysia: Making Sense of an Eccentric Nation, a collection of his selected writings on identity politics, political Islam, federalism and education. Finding Malaysia proved to be one of publisher Gerakbudaya's best-selling books of 2017. Zairil has also published book chapters in Secularism, Religion, and Democracy in Southeast Asia by Vidhu Verma, Policies and Politics in Malaysian Education: Education Reforms, Nationalism and Neoliberalism by Cynthia Joseph, Dialog: Thoughts on Tunku’s Timeless Thinking by the think tank IDEAS, and Young and Malay: Growing up in Multicultural Malaysia by Ooi Kee Beng and Wan Hamidi Hamid.
