No more top Tories will join Reform, Kemi Badenoch has predicted as she blasted Robert Jenrick as a liar who she was glad to be rid of.

The Conservative leader claimed her party was stronger and more united after she dramatically sacked her leadership rival, having discovered he was planning to defect, and thanked Nigel Farage for doing her ‘spring cleaning’.

She also insisted she would never do a deal with Reform UK despite growing pleas for the two parties to work together so they can together defeat Labour at the next election.

Mr Jenrick claimed he was in fact uniting the Right by changing allegiance and denied his move was motivated by personal ambition.

But he was warned by Tory grandee Lord Michael Gove that he too may now become best known for his treachery while Reform risks becoming the ‘Slytherin House’ of British politics.

In a round of interviews on Friday as the fallout continued from Thursday’s dramatic events, Mrs Badenoch said: ‘I’m thrilled because Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me. The problems are leaving the Conservative party and going to Reform.’

Asked by Sky News if she was confident that no more members of her Shadow Cabinet would defect, she replied: ‘We are a stronger and more united team because Robert Jenrick is not a team player. I am 100 per cent confident.’

However she told the Press Association that any others in the party who ‘think that it’s all a game’ and want ‘psychodrama’ should also go.

Mrs Badenoch told GB News: ‘It's quite clear that Robert Jenrick tells a lot of lies, and you can't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. This is a man who was asked yesterday morning if he was going to defect. And he said "never". But we found evidence of speeches he was going to give.’

She told The Times that he was ‘like someone wanting to be the priest of a church and not getting the job so going off to the mosque next door and saying, “I’m going to be an imam now.”’

Asked by reporters if her party would go into the next general election alone, she replied: ‘Yes. How do you do a deal with liars?’

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Jenrick was also told that a fight on the Right will only split the vote and allow Labour to remain in power.

But he insisted: ‘This is uniting the Right. If you want to get rid of this Labour Government and have a strong reforming government to fix the country, there's frankly only one way to do that. That is to vote for Nigel, to rally behind him and Reform.’

Mr Jenrick said he had ‘put long-standing party allegiance to one side’ and ‘put personal ambition to one side’ to put the country first.

However former Cabinet minister Lord Gove, infamous for turning against his Brexit ally Boris Johnson, told Radio 4: ‘The overall impression that will have been generated is that he was caught mid-plot.’

And he said there was a danger that Reform, now home to more than 20 former Tory MPs, now looks more like ‘Slytherin house’ than a fresh force in politics.

Meanwhile more Tories echoed the plea by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg for their party to form an electoral pact with Reform UK to stop Labour remaining in power.

Sir John Hayes MP, a close friend of Mr Jenrick, said: ‘I do think there will come a point where we have to do that, to ensure we don’t have a perpetual left-of-centre government.’

Tory peer Lord Jackson of Peterborough said: ‘Both parties have to consider the alternative to them not working together, which is a discredited Labour rump supported by the Liberal Democrats and Greens that would be a catastrophic outcome for our country.’

Former Tory MP Nick Fletcher said of the defection: ‘The more this happens, the more the Right is going to be split, sadly, and the Labour party will end up winning again.

‘I think it will continue for the next 18 months but as we get closer to the general election, maybe something will have to give.’