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Kemi Badenoch hits out at Farage after 'losing 20% of his MP's' - as she brands Lib Dems and Reform ‘protest parties’
28 April 2025, 22:01 | Updated: 29 April 2025, 09:23
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has hit out at Nigel Farage and the Reform party, labelling Reform and the Lib Dems as ‘protest parties’.
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Badenoch criticised Farage during a phone-in with LBC’s Iain Dale, saying he has “lost 20% of his MPs”, referring to former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.
Lowe, the former MP for Great Yarmouth, was suspended from the party in March and referred to police, as the party alleged he made "threats of physical violence" against party chairman Zia Yusuf.
Referring to Farage’s handling of Lowe’s suspension, and the public fallout that came with it, Badenoch said: “If he can’t manage a group of four, how’s he going to manage a group of 400”
She also labelled Reform a ‘protest party’, saying the country has a need for ‘authentic conservatives’.
“At the end of the day, by going with protest parties, we’d end up with people who’d never run anything before,” she said.
It comes after Badenoch said she would not rule out local pacts with Reform in Thursday's local elections, although the Tory leader said she did not envision such an agreement being rolled out nationwide.
Read more: Robert Jenrick vows to 'unite the fight' with Tory-Reform coalition pact
The Conservatives are expected to lose hundreds of council seats in the local elections.
She admitted that the last Conservative government made mistakes, but said voting for ‘protest parties’ was not the answer as Britain needs “serious credibility”.
She said the Tories have "acknowledged that we've got things wrong" - and that immigration and taxes were "far too high".
"People voted for change, they got change for the worse with Labour,” she said.
The Tory leader laughed off the suggestion that Robert Jenrick should be ‘chucked out’ of the party, after he vowed to ‘unite the fight’ by suggesting an apparent Tory-Reform coalition.
Robert Jenrick previously said he would try 'one way or another' to make sure Reform UK and the Conservatives do not compete against each other at the next general election.
kemi full exchange
Jenrick, who was the runner-up to Kemi Badenoch in the Tory leadership contest, said: "[Reform UK] continues to do well in the polls. And my worry is that they become a kind of permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the British political scene.
"And if that is the case, and I say, I am trying to do everything I can to stop that being the case, then life becomes a lot harder for us, because the right is not united."
But Badenoch has now said his statement was not referring to Reform.
"Jenrick says we need to unite that coalition of voters, he wasn't talking about a pact with Reform. He is holding Labour's feet to the fire,” she said.
“We can work together. This is not a one man or one woman band."
Asked if Jenrick was manoeuvring, she said "no. We always have the drama... I'm somebody who isn't very moved by that."
