Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has ruled out any deals with Reform UK and insisted that politicians who left the Tories for Nigel Farage's party would not be allowed back in.
Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Mrs Badenoch launched a fierce attack on Mr Farage and his party, saying Reform has people who left the Conservative Party who are "some of the most dishonest people I have ever met in my entire life."
No 'monstrous hybrid' government
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 insisted that she wanted to "win on my own terms" at the next general election and warned that "the country is going to be in a pretty bad place" if the Conservatives fail to form the next government.
Attack on Nigel Farage
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."
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?"
Asked by host Iain Dale if not working with Reform could mean a possible 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."
No return for defectors
Mrs Badenoch ruled 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 we 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."
She continued: "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."
Praise for Scottish leader
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."
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."
