Kemi Badenoch described Reform UK as “woke” as she again ruled out a deal with Nigel Farage’s party.
The Conservative leader told the Political Currency podcast she would make no pact with Reform either before or after the next election.
Asked why she would not support an agreement, she said she did not want the public to be “confused about what this Conservative Party stands for”.
She said: “Reform are a woke party, and I know a lot of people don’t understand, the word woke is used to mean many things, a lot of people assume it’s a left-wing thing.
“But when I talk about woke, I talk about people who, it’s all grievance, it’s victim narratives, people are doing this to us, oppressor narratives, this is the oppressor class.
“On the left it’s whites are the oppressors or men are the oppressors, on the right it’s the establishment are the oppressors, look at what they’re doing to us.
“It’s all moaning and whingeing and not proper solutions. It’s about power dynamics and how to get power, not actually solutions and how to fix things.”
Describing a deal as a “non-starter”, she said: “I don’t see how I could possibly have people like that in some form of coalition.”
Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf hit back at a press conference later on Thursday, saying the party did have a “grievance” about the Tories “spending 14 years lying to the British public”.
“I don’t think Kemi’s had the best few days, and she’s obviously lashed out at Reform, started calling us names,” he told reporters when asked about the Tory leader’s attack.
“She said that we’re a party that has, you know, we have grievances. I would agree with that. We do have a grievance. We have a grievance of the fact that (they) spent 14 years lying to the British public.”
He said the party had claimed they would reduce net legal migration down to the tens of thousands but it instead reached nearly one million, and also attacked its record on the prisons system and small boat crossings.
“I maintain my view that the Tories, as of the next general election, will no longer be a serious, credible, national political party,” Mr Yusuf said.
A Reform source added: “According to Kemi, being woke apparently means not having neo-Nazis in your party.”
Current polling suggests that an election held today would lead to a hung parliament, with no party securing enough seats to form a majority on its own.
But Mrs Badenoch has consistently ruled out doing a deal with Mr Farage to “unite the right”.
The Tory leader told Political Currency: “I’m not trying to unite the right, I’m trying to unite the country. You can’t run the country with just one half of it.”
Mr Farage himself has also previously rejected talk of a pact, saying he wants to replace the Conservatives.
