Badenoch Rules Out Reform Deal, Calls Farage Woke

Kemi Badenoch has ruled out any electoral pact with Reform UK, describing Nigel Farage's party as "woke" - a charge more commonly directed at the Conservatives by their right flank.

GB News reports Badenoch vowed never to join forces with Reform despite the Tories' sinking polling numbers. The Express notes the accusation represents a "strange attack" given Reform's positioning as the anti-woke alternative. The Mail's Dan Hodges argues that while both major parties deserved the shock Reform delivered, the next election will still be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives.

The "woke" accusation inverts the usual script. Badenoch appears to be deploying the term to mean something like ideological rigidity or purity spiralling - the same behaviour Reform supporters diagnose in their opponents. It is an attempt to reclaim the insult and redirect it, though whether voters who care about wokeness will accept a Conservative leader's verdict on who counts as woke is another question.

The hardline against any deal leaves the Tories and Reform competing for the same voters in a first-past-the-post system, which tends to punish parties that split a coalition. Badenoch is betting the Conservative brand still commands enough residual loyalty to outlast a protest party, even one polling at similar levels. The counter-bet is that Reform's offer - untested by office, unburdened by the last decade - proves stickier than previous insurgencies.

What to watch: whether Reform's polling holds or decays as an election nears, and whether Badenoch's refusal to countenance a deal holds if the Tories face another wipeout.