The Tory leader some those who had left her party for Reform UK were ‘some of the most dishonest people’ she has met.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch insisted defectors who left her party for Nigel Farage’s Reform are “some of the most dishonest people” she has met, as she ruled out allowing them to come back to the Conservatives.
Mrs Badenoch again ruled out doing a deal with Reform UK after the next general election, saying she would rather go back to the country and have another election if there was a hung parliament than have a “monstrous Reform/Conservative hybrid” government at Westminster.
She spoke out as she launched a fierce attack on Mr Farage and his party, firmly ruling out any prospect of an election deal with them.
Mrs Badenoch, speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, blasted: “Reform has people who left the Conservative Party, some of the most dishonest people I have ever met in my entire life.”
The Tory leader, who warned that “the country is going to be in a pretty bad place” if the Conservatives fail to form the next government at Westminster, insisted that she wanted to “win on my own terms” at the next general election.
Hitting out at Reform, Mrs Badenoch said: “Nigel Farage dictates what he wants depending on what he had for breakfast that day. They are all over the place, they announce one policy, they forget it the next day.
“How do I work with people like that when I am making carefully curated plans and taking a systems-based approach?
“How do you work with a man who has fallen out with every single person he has ever had to work with in every single party that he has started?
“I am not going to do that. I have to win on my own terms.”
Asked by host Iain Dale if not working with Reform could mean a possible Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition if there was to be a hung parliament, Mrs Badenoch insisted in those circumstances the best option would be to go back to the country and hold a fresh election.
She said: “If we get a hung parliament and people see that the parties can’t form a government, you have another election.”
She insisted: “What I want is a Conservative government, not a monstrous Reform/Conservative hybrid.”
Speaking about the election, the Conservative made clear there would be “no deals before or after”.
She said: “It is very much about character, very much about confidence, very much about common sense.
“I want us to unite the country. It is not about uniting the right, it is about uniting our country.
She went on to rule out politicians who have left the Tories for Reform coming back to her party, insisting that she does “not want drama queens in the Conservative Party”.
She said she had “heard that other MPs are having indirect approaches” from previous defectors, but stated: “I am not really entertaining them.”
Hitting out at politicians such as Robert Jenrick, who quit the Tories for Mr Farage’s party, Mrs Badenoch said: “These are people who left us when were at our lowest, many of them the people who caused the problems in the first place and then ran away and pretended they had nothing to do with it.
“Why should we have them back?”
She continued: “I don’t want drama queens in the Conservative Party, I want people who are serious about delivering for the country.”
Mrs Badenoch went on: “What would I be saying about myself if I just let people jump in and out of my party whenever they liked? That would show I wasn’t serious and I was desperate to have whoever I could get.
“I want only the very best, only the brightest, only the most hardworking, to be Conservative MPs.”
Speaking in Edinburgh, the Tory leader said she “feels a pull to Scotland” but added that the country was in a “very dysfunctional” relationship with the SNP.
She told the audience: “I do feel a pull to Scotland, because I see this as a place that should be more Conservative than it is.
“I see it as a place that feels like it gets ignored by Westminster, and so has run into the arms of the SNP, and the SNP and Scotland have been a very bad marriage, very dysfunctional.
“I don’t think people love the SNP, but they think the SNP is on their side. I want the people of Scotland to know the Conservatives are on your side, we very much are. We understand the issues.”
Praising the Scottish Tory leader, she said: “Russell Findlay really should be the first minister. He is so good, he has got so much integrity.”
