John Major warns Tory merger with Reform would be 'fatal' - 'Farage wants to destroy us'

It comes after all the leadership candidates confirmed they would not want Nigel Farage in the party should they emerge victorious.

The Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton told GB News: "It is of no interest to me whatsoever."

Speaking to the BBC, Sir John Major said: "We lost five [seats] to Reform UK and people are jumping up and down, and some, rather reckless people are saying, well we must merge with them. Well, that will be fatal."

When asked whether Farage should join the Conservative party, Sir John said he did not "share that view."

He added: "I don’t think he’s a Conservative, and he’s spent most of his time in the last few years telling people how much he dislikes the Conservative party and would like to destroy it. I don’t think that’s a terribly good background for bringing someone into the party."

Sir John also called on his party to appeal to the centre-right, "where our natural support really lies", arguing the Tories lost far more seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats than Reform UK.

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It comes after leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch said Reform UK supporters were "our people."

She told GB News: "I think one of the mistakes we made was making Reform voters think that they were not our people. They are our people. Many of the people who voted Reform were lifelong Tory voters."

The first Reform UK MP, Lee Anderson, had the whip removed after refusing to apologise for remarks about London Mayor Sadiq Khan that the London mayor described as “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim and racist”.

Badenoch claims she told the chief whip: "Do not do this. This is a bad, bad decision. That was a huge mistake and that lit the touch paper. Basically we are saying ‘we don’t want these kind of people’, to get them out.”

However, while the MP for North West Essex praised Farage for being a "disruptor" she stopped short of saying he would be welcome in the Conservatives under her leadership.

Badenoch said: "He has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party, so I think that’s probably a no."