Kemi Badenoch has suggested Nigel Farage is lying about Elon Musk being willing to give money to Reform UK.
Farage was pictured with the tech billionaire and new Reform treasurer Nick Candy at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week.
The Reform leader said Musk was giving “serious thought” to donating to reform amid speculation that he could donate as much as $100 million to the right-wing party.
On Radio Four’s Today programme this morning, Badenoch said: “I believe in competition, so I think that if Elon Musk is giving a competitor party money then that is a challenge for me to make sure that I raise the same.”
But she then added: “I don’t think he’s actually giving them anything. I think he said that he wasn’t.
“All we’ve seen is Nigel Farage saying he’s going to give me money. Mr Farage says a whole load of things. I don’t say things unless they are true.”
The Tory leader also hit out at Reform’s policies, which she said were “not real conservatism”
“It’s not based on principles, it is all about what it is against,” she said. “We are about what we are for.”
Reform have called for Thames Water to be nationalised and said the government must do more to protest steel-making in the UK.
But Badenoch accused the party of “just saying stuff” to be popular.
She said: “It’s very easy to have a contrast when you’re not doing anything, and what I would say to your listeners and to your audience is aren’t you tired of people who tell you lies? Aren’t you tired of people who tell you what you want to hear?
“I will not do that, which is why I don’t answer those questions because the answer should always be ‘it depends’.”
The Tory leader added: “Reform doesn’t know what those details are, so they’re just saying stuff. It’s not real. You are asking me to tell people what is not real. ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that’.
“That’s what all these parties do, then they get into government and because they haven’t thought it through then they run into trouble.”