Jenrick uses 'zombie' jibe to rule out a Reform-Tory pact.

REFORM UK's Robert Jenrick has said a pact with the Conservatives would be like "being handcuffed to a zombie".

The party's Treasury spokesman insisted Reform is not interested in such an agreement, just a day after its leader Nigel Farage refused to rule it out.

Mr Farage told the Press Association a pact before the next election is "extremely unlikely", but added: "After an election, who's to say?" It came after Kemi Badenoch used her Conservative Party conference speech on Wednesday to reject the idea of a deal, saying: "To those who say 'unite the right', we are not uniting with that."

" Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mr Jenrick said: "he Tories ruling out a deal with Reform is like me saying to Thomas Tuchel that I'm ruling out being selected for the England squad versus Croatia.

"I mean, doing a deal with the Tory party is like being handcuffed to a zombie. It's not something we're interested in, trust me."

Mr Jenrick also declined to answer whether he regards Mrs Badenoch as English after former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a Reform MP, suggested on the BBC's Question Time programme that non-white people born in the UK could be British, but not English.

Mrs Badenoch said in her conference speech: "I don't want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists and debate whether my mixed-race children are English.

"I don't want to explain to my son when we're watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don't think our black players are English."

" Mr Jenrick said: "Is there such a thing as English ethnicity? Yes. Not always easy to dfine, we've had a broadly stable population for much of the last 1,000 years, at least from the period from 1066 to the 1960s.

"That is different from national identity. That is whether or not you ascribe to, you assimilate to our history, our heritage, our culture, our norms, our manners, and that in turn is also different to whether or not you have a British passport in your bedroom drawer.

"What worries me the most is that there are some people now in this country who have the passport in their drawer, but do not seem to have accepted and assimilated into our culture, do not love this country."

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Reform UK Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick JONATHAN BRADY