Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has warned her MPs against more plotting and “psychodrama” after two defections from the party in four days.
Former shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick became the most senior Tory to move to Reform UK, after Badenoch discovered he was planning to defect last week, and sacked him.
Andrew Rosindell, who was the shadow minister for foreign affairs for the Conservatives, made the leap to Nigel Farage’s party this weekend.
Now Badenoch has called some of her MPs on the right of the party to a meeting on Monday night, to underline the message.
Farage will be attending a rally with Jenrick in the former Tory’s Newark constituency. The Reform leader has warned those thinking of defecting to his party that they should do so before the May elections or risk being rejected.
In a letter obtained by BBC, Badenoch insisted the defections were “a minor setback, not a defining moment” for her party, and called for unity.
“A party that is ruthlessly focused on being effective, holding the government to account and creating a plan for the country cannot also spend its time on psychodrama and intrigue,” she wrote.
The Conservative leader also suggested MPs “satisfy themselves” about their own staff’s behaviour, because “a small number of individuals were actively briefing against the party while presenting themselves as Conservative sources”.
She warned: “Those who want to undermine or destroy the party will be dealt with firmly and fairly.”
Former Conservatives, including David Gauke, who was justice secretary under Theresa May, have suggested the party should move towards the centre ground and leave the “populist right” to Reform, but Badenoch dismissed this as a “serious misreading of the situation”.
Instead, she attacked the more than 20 former Tories who have moved to Farage’s party as being part of a wider cultural problem, insisting the defections “are not about policy differences or ideology” but “character” and “those who put individual ambition” above public service.
Badenoch said she believed Britain is not “broken”, as Jenrick claimed in his defection speech, but pointed the finger at a broken political culture “because too many who come into it are motivated by self-interest and not national interest”.
Sir Keir Starmer also “cannot get legislation through because of the self-interest of his own MPs”, despite having a huge majority, she said.
But she also told MPs the Conservatives are “stronger and more united now”, adding: “We are a team that wants to talk to voters, not just to ourselves or online echo chambers.”
