Kemi Badenoch has thanked Nigel Farage for helping make the Conservatives “even stronger” as she delivered a damning verdict on Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform.

The Conservative Party leader sacked her former Shadow Justice Secretary on Thursday due to “irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect”.

Mrs Badenoch has now accused the Newark MP of “lying”, claiming he denied he was planning to abandon the party despite there being “evidence” to suggest otherwise.

She told GB News: “What I can tell your audience is that it is quite clear that Robert Jenrick tells a lot of lies and you can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.

“This is a man who was asked yesterday morning ‘Are you going to defect?’ and he said ‘never’ to the Chief Whip when we found evidence of the speeches he was going to give.

“Why has all this happened? Because he has fallen out with people and those people have brought stuff to us.

“I won’t say much more than that, but the truth is, this is someone who gave a speech yesterday complaining about things that were already there when he was standing to be the leader.

“This man said ‘I want to be leader of the Conservative Party’ while all of the things that he said yesterday still have applied.

“He is leaving because he doesn’t think he could be leader.”

The Tory leader added: “People from Reform and other Conservative Party members have been bringing stuff to me about the actions he had been doing to undermine the party and I kept giving him the chance.

“I am just glad that Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me, he is taking away my problems.

“The Conservative Party is even more united and stronger because we’ve lost someone who is not a team player.”

Mrs Badenoch confirmed that Nick Timothy, MP for West Suffolk, will replace Mr Jenrick as Shadow Justice Secretary.

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Despite comments, Mrs Badenoch was remarkably encouraged to join Mr Jenrick at Reform by former Tory Danny Kruger.

“I have great sympathy with Kemi and with the colleagues that we both left behind. But I’m afraid they should do the same thing,” he told GB News.

“They need to recognise that the Conservative Party cannot deliver conservatism. It cannot deliver the sort of change that we on the right of politics believe in. Nigel Farage can.”

Mr Jenrick was unveiled by Mr Farage on Thursday afternoon following his surprise sacking.

“Britain is in decline,” the former Shadow Justice Secretary said at a press conference.

He added: “I challenge anyone to argue other than that Britain is completely broken. Those that came before us built a great country, the greatest country in the world. But we are set to lose it.”

Mr Jenrick also described both the Tories and Labour as “rotten”, who had “both broke Britain”.

More than 20 ex-Tory MPs have now defected to Reform, after former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi also announced he was joining the party this week.

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