Kemi Badenoch takes aim at Nigel Farage with attack on Reform membership: ‘What can they do?’
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has launched a blistering attack on Reform UK and Nigel Farage, dismissing the party’s members as simply a “fan club”.
Speaking to Camilla Tominey in an exclusive interview on GB News, Badenoch denied that the Tories are under threat from the surging popularity of Reform, declaring she is “here for the long haul”.
She stated: “It’s going to be a long slog. I am here for the long haul. I’m not here just to make a few quick speeches and throw gimmicks out.
“People need to know that they can trust us, and what they want to see is someone being a credible and effective opposition, making sure that I’m standing up for Conservative values.”
Dismissing Farage’s party as a “fan club” rather than a “members organisation”, Badenoch told GB News that the Reform leader is an “individual personality”, but the Tories are a “serious institution”.
Badenoch explained: “Nigel Farage is an individual personality. He doesn’t even have a membership organisation. I have.
“They’re saying they’ve got 100,000 members now, and that they might overtake the Tories – they say that, but what can they do as members?”
Defending the Tories further against Reform, Badenoch claimed: “My members have a say, they’re part of the organisation. I have to look after them, they’re not my fan club. They are people that I have a responsibility to.
“We are a serious institution.”
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When pressed by Camilla on the possibility of a merger deal between the two parties, Badenoch was adamant in ruling the situation out.
She told GB News: “I haven’t been elected as leader of the Conservative Party to do a deal with Nigel Farage.
“I have been elected as the leader to fix this Conservative Party and get us back to where we were as the champion of Conservative values and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Noting the work that the Conservatives must do in order to win back support from voters, Badenoch declared that the party will have to “pick themselves up”, but it will take the “full time in opposition” to do so.
Badenoch said: “Yes, we have come out of a historic defeat. We’re going to have to pick ourselves up.
“But that’s not going to happen in five weeks or five months. It’s going to take the full time in opposition.”
She concluded: “We are people who are serious. When we make mistakes, we acknowledge them. Labour pretends it doesn’t make mistakes.
“Farage is talking, but he does not have the experience – we do. So what I’m saying to your viewers is, there is only one party that has the experience, that knows what went wrong and knows how to solve this, and that’s the Conservatives.”