KEMI BADENOCH has insisted that defectors who left her party for Reform are “some of the most dishonest people” she has ever met.

The Tory leader ruled out allowing them back in the Conservative Party as she launched a blistering attack on the rival right-wing party at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Saturday.

And she again ruled out doing an election deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after the next general election.

Ms Badenoch said 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 blasted: “Reform has people who left the Conservative Party, some of the most dishonest people I have ever met in my entire life.”

The North West Essex MP insisted that she wanted to “win on my own terms” at the next general election.

Hitting out at Reform, Ms 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.

“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?”

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.

“Why should we have them back?”

She added: “I don’t want drama queens in the Conservative Party, I want people who are serious about delivering for the country.”