Robert Jenrick has launched an extended attack on Kemi Badenoch, calling her part of a metropolitan elite and saying a coalition deal with the Tories would be like being \u201chandcuffed to a zombie\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reform UK\u2019s economics spokesperson repeatedly called the Tory leader \u201cKensington Kemi\u201d and claimed her party was for people who moaned about the decline of Mayfair clubs and complained that they could not find Ottolenghi recipe ingredients in the shops.<\/p>\n
He accused his former party of handing out \u201cbungs for Belgravia\u201d after the Conservatives said at their autumn conference that they would exempt property from inheritance tax<\/a> and extend free childcare to higher earners<\/a> if elected.<\/p>\n Jenrick\u2019s attack on Badenoch, whose approval ratings among the public have improved, come at a time of deteriorating relations between the Conservatives and Reform. Jenrick was the target of much mockery at the Conservative conference, where he was depicted in multiple places on a satirical Bayeux tapestry<\/a> of the political landscape as a crying baby. He was kicked out of the Tories in January for planning to defect.<\/p>\n In her conference speech, Badenoch firmly ruled out any move to \u201cunite the right\u201d with a deal between Reform and the Tories, questioning who would want to join with a party that made her British-born mixed-race children feel as though they were not English.<\/p>\n The Reform leader, Nigel Farage, downplayed the idea of a post-election pact on Thursday, saying it was \u201cextremely unlikely\u201d. Jenrick took a tougher line against the Conservatives<\/a> in his press conference on Friday, saying they were \u201cnothing more than a metropolitan pressure group for the wealthiest\u201d and likening a tie-up to being \u201chandcuffed to a zombie\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cKensington Kemi knows who her people are. Millionaires, not Mansfield,\u201d Jenrick said. \u201cThe wealthy, not workers. She\u2019s for people who complain that Mayfair clubs aren\u2019t what they used to be. For people who struggle to find all the ingredients for that Ottolenghi recipe. And people whose lives have got almost nothing in common with my constituents in Newark.\u201d<\/p>\n