Kemi Badenoch has told GB News that Nigel Farage is “not serious” about leading Reform UK following a triple defection from the Tories.

Speaking to the People’s Channel, the Conservative leader hit out at the Reform UK leader and claimed he is sending a “very confused message” to Britons.

Taking aim at the triple defection, on the same day Mr Farage declared he “doesn’t trust the Tories”, Mrs Badenoch said: “I think he is worried. On the same day when he’s trying to recruit as many former Conservatives as possible, he’s saying ‘don’t trust the Tories’.

“It can’t be both things at the same time. I think it’s a very confused message, but I’m not really interested in what he’s saying.”

She stated: “I think the fact that he chose to attack us at a time when it’s Labour that’s on the ropes, it’s the Chancellor who’s in the dock, they are making everyone in our country poorer apart from people on benefits.

“And Nigel Farage thinks the most important thing to do is to attack me? That is not serious.”

Urging all political parties to “get a grip”, Mrs Badenoch told GB News: “We right now as a country need to get serious and get a grip.

“We are getting poorer, we’re living beyond our means. We are the only party, the Conservatives, who are interested in fiscal responsibility, and I think that people can see that, and that’s why they’re paying more attention.”

Pressing the Tory leader on her flagship policy, in which she has vowed to scrap stamp duty, host Andrew Pierce asked why she has not spoken more about the plans.

Mrs Badenoch responded: “I am talking about with every single opportunity, I’m at a business right now where they talked about what the last Budget did to them, and the jobs tax meant that they had to sack people. We need aspirational positive policies like abolishing stamp duty, so thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.

“We are making sure that people know what our policies are, but there is a lot that is going on. And right now, the big problem with the Budget is that working people are being taxed to the hilt to pay for benefits. That was a budget for benefits.”

She fumed: “Rachel Reeves is using everyone else’s money in order to save her job, bribe her backbenchers so they don’t get rid of her, and that is the wrong way round. She should be losing her job and everyone else should be keeping theirs.”

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Outlining another one of her policies which will help reverse the impact of Rachel Reeves’s two Budgets on Britons, Mrs Badenoch told GB News: “The other thing that people are talking about is revitalising the high streets.

“We want to scrap business rates for most of the high streets if they’re under £110,000. Rates on retail, hospitality, leisure – that’s pubs, shops, cafes, restaurants, we would scrap their business rates.”

Vowing to restore the trust of the Conservative Party in British voters, the party leader made clear that they are “working hard” to “make people understand what we stand for now”.

She said: “We won four elections in a row, so I think that people saw something that they were voting for. And I’m not here to pretend that everything was perfect, it certainly wasn’t. There were a lot of arguments about which direction to go.

“But what I’m trying to do is make sure people understand what we stand for now. I am very proud of my own personal record in Government, there was a lot of stuff that I did as Business Secretary, as Equalities Minister, that stood the test of time. And I can say that I did the right thing.”

Mrs Badenoch added: “I’m in charge now, the party is now under my leadership, not the previous people. I don’t have a time machine to go back and fix some of the things that went wrong, but when it came to things like cutting the deficit, we did that all the way to the pandemic.

“If any other party, Labour, Lib Dems, Reform had been in charge during the pandemic, this country would have been bankrupted. We saved the country during that time. I am proud of it.

“We didn’t get everything right, and we’re going to show people that we can earn their trust, that we are worthy of their trust. We’re not expecting everybody to rush back overnight. We are working hard to make sure that we can win the trust of the British people.”