Kemi Badenoch has ruled out any election deal with Reform UK, insisting she would rather trigger another general election than form a "monstrous Reform/Conservative hybrid" government at Westminster. Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Conservative leader also attacked former Tory MPs who defected to Nigel Farage's party, calling them "some of the most dishonest people I have ever met in my entire life."
No deals before or after the election
Mrs Badenoch firmly ruled out any prospect of an election agreement with Reform, saying she wanted to "win on my own terms" at the next general election. She warned that "the country is going to be in a pretty bad place" if the Conservatives fail to form the next government.
Hitting out at Mr Farage, she 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."
She added: "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?"
Fresh election preferred to coalition
Asked by host Iain Dale if refusing to work with Reform could lead to a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition in a hung parliament, Mrs Badenoch insisted 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." The Conservative leader made clear there would be "no deals before or after" the election.
Defectors 'not welcome back'
Mrs Badenoch also ruled out allowing politicians who left the Tories for Reform to return to the party, saying 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, she 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. 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."
Appeal to Scotland
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."
She said: "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."
