Nigel Farage has said a pact between Reform and Boris Johnson would never work, after the Conservative defector Nadine Dorries called for the right to unite.
Farage said the public would “never ever forgive” Johnson for designing an immigration system that led to an increase of millions of people coming to the UK legally after Brexit, calling it the “Boris wave”.
Dorries, a close ally of Johnson and a former culture secretary, defected from the Conservatives to Reform before its conference on Friday and told the audience the Tory party “is dead”.
But on Sunday she gave an interview to a Mail podcast saying Johnson should team up with Farage to create an election-winning machine. “If there’s a will to make the lives of people better, then I think both men could and would find some way to accommodate each other’s egos and to coexist for the sake of the country,” she said.
She added: “We need all the political talents on the right of centre putting their shoulder to what needs to be done for the country.”
Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Farage said he did “not think that would really work somehow”. “The Boris wave was felt by millions of people, millions were allowed into Britain most of whom don’t work … people will never ever forgive him.”
In an interview with Sky, Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, called Johnson “one of the worst prime ministers in British history” and accused him of betraying Brexit voters. He said the former Conservative leader would never be welcome in his party.
“We certainly would not welcome Boris Johnson – that’s never going to happen,” he said. “He threw open our borders. The Boris wave, which is millions and millions of non-EU migrants flooding into the country post-Brexit, betrayed every single person that voted Brexit. Frankly he was one of the worst prime ministers in British history.”
Farage said he welcomed Dorries into Reform despite her backing for Johnson because he needed people experienced at being in government.
But Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, was dismissive of Farage’s decision to allow her former cabinet colleague into the party. She highlighted that Dorries was an architect of the Online Safety Act, to which Reform is firmly opposed on the grounds that it limits free speech.
Badenoch said Farage had “confessed he wanted Conservatives to join his party because he couldn’t do anything without them”.
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Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, said: “Nigel Farage has no plan for Britain. Now he’s admitted he doesn’t have confidence that his team is capable of delivering a plan if he did have one.”
Farage was also pressed on Sunday over his tax arrangements, including the Guardian’s revelation that he said he had bought a house in Clacton when it was actually owned by his partner. If he had bought a constituency home himself, he would have been liable for higher rate stamp duty of about £44,000 because it is paid at a higher rate for a second home.
Farage said on Saturday he had misspoken when he said he had bought the property. Pressed again on the BBC about the house being owned by his partner, he said: “The fact that she’s bought a house: why not?”
Asked about his media earnings going through a company rather than as an employee on payroll, which could potentially lower his tax bill, Farage said his company did many things including employing other people. He said he thought publishing his own tax return “an intrusion too far” and he was “not inclined at the moment to do that”.
