Six Conservative MPs have thrown their hat in the ring to be the next leader of the party
The Conservative Party is out of touch with voters and the candidates vying for the leadership are "desperate", according to Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice.
So far, six Conservative MPs, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat have thrown their hat in the ring to be the next leader of the party.
Asked if the contenders for the leadership were right to rule out a deal with Reform UK, Tice told GB News: "They're all frankly desperate in their own sort of sweet way. No one's really interested in what's going on in the Tory party.
"They got annihilated in the election. They seem completely invisible. We're the only people that are actually talking about immigration.
"Priti Patel seems to have completely given up on it. She's proud of her record of emboldening mass immigration between 2021 and now, and she won't even leave the ECHR. These are things about which, actually the majority of the British people are settled.
"I just think they're out of touch and the real issue which is what the Labour Party is doing with taxpayers’ cash. We're now on a sort of an escalator ever upwards of union demands for ever bigger pay rises, and that's going to be a catastrophe for the UK's finances."
He added: "What you do in the private sector, when you talk about pay rises above inflation, you say, ‘well, there's got to be some productivity improvements, there's got to be some performance-related element to it’.
"It works in the private sector, you get growth, and that's what we need.
"We need some productivity and we need some performance in the public sector, the truth is, as the wage bill goes up, the number of people working in the public sector goes up.
"Productivity is collapsing and it is sending our taxes to 70-year highs. And yet, what works out there? The truth is, almost nothing does work."
