Reform UK Chairman David Bull has hit back at Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch after she accused his party of copying the Tories’ immigration proposals.
Speaking to Camilla Tominey on GB News, Mr Bull said his "mouth dropped open" when he read the Government’s latest border plans, insisting they were a “copy and paste” of Reform’s own Operation Restoring Justice policy.
This comes after Kemi Badenoch said the only workable parts of Nigel Farage’s pledges had come from Conservative policy but that Reform was "not doing the thinking" required to deliver.
Mr Bull fumed: "I think this is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to have some sort of credibility, some semblance of actually being able to do something.
David Bull said that his "mouth dropped" when he saw the policy
|GB NEWS
"In fact, when I read that policy last night, my mouth dropped open because it’s pretty much a copy and paste of the policy we launched about a month ago, Operation Restoring Justice.
"Pretty much, they’re doing exactly what we said. It’s literally a copy and paste, they’ve taken every single word.
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"And when Chris Philp spoke this morning about the fact that we put it together on the back of a fag packet, I think that’s pretty rich coming from the Conservative Party, the same party that’s done nothing about our porous borders for 14 years."
Camilla said: "Kemi Badenoch has accused you of ripping off her indefinite leave to remain plan.
"She says she’s set up a commission with Lord Wolfson to work through the legal arguments for leaving the ECHR, whereas you haven’t spoken to as many lawyers as she has on the issue.
"If they have ripped off your policy, though, you must be delighted, David, that both parties on the right are now singing from Nigel Farage’s hymn sheet."
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David Bull said: "Well, if you look at the latest Merlin poll, voters don’t actually trust the Tories to get anything done and there’s a very good reason for that. They talk, but nothing ever happens.
"And when you look at the latest polling, this is from this morning, we’ve gone up to 34, up two points.
"The Conservatives and Labour are both down. We’re now polling almost as much as Labour and the Tories combined.
"The public is saying they want to take back control of our borders. They want someone to actually sort out this unholy mess and the people to do that are Reform UK."
Kemi Badenoch has launched a major push to outflank Nigel Farage
|PA
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has launched a major push to outflank Nigel Farage, unveiling plans to deport 150,000 illegal migrants annually ahead of her keynote speech at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester.
Badenoch released her Borders document last night, setting out how a Conservative Government would tackle what she calls the migrant crisis.
The seven-part strategy includes banning asylum claims for illegal entrants, withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention on Action against Trafficking, and repealing the Human Rights Act.
Badenoch has vowed to deport all new illegal migrants within a week of arrival and remove all foreign criminals from the UK.
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