Badenoch rules out Conservative coalition with Reform UK
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said she is not considering a coalition or pre-election agreement with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. She said this during an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, The Guardian reports.
Badenoch also sharply criticised former Conservatives who defected to Reform UK. She called some of them among the most dishonest people she had met in her life and said she was not prepared to readmit to the party those she described as “drama queens.”
Criticism of defectors
According to the publication, several current or former parliamentarians have moved from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick.
Jenrick left the Conservative Party in January this year. After Badenoch dismissed him over, according to a source, a plot against her, he called his former party “rotten” and “incapable.”
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According to Badenoch, some of the people who left the Conservatives during a period of party weakness were themselves involved in its problems and later tried to distance themselves from responsibility. She added that she does not consider indirect approaches from politicians who previously joined Reform UK.
Position on the next election
The Conservative leader also said that Reform UK acts inconsistently: according to her, the party may announce a policy and forget about it the next day. Badenoch said she wants to win the next general election on her own, rather than through an alliance with Farage’s party.
She noted that in the event of a hung parliament, she would rather choose to hold a new election than form a government involving the Conservatives and Reform UK. Badenoch stressed that there would be no agreements with Reform UK before the election — neither before nor after the vote.
According to the latest Ipsos poll, conducted among 1,033 adults in the United Kingdom from July 30 to August 4, the Labour Party was supported by 28% of respondents, Reform UK by 25%, and the Conservative Party by 18%.
