Kemi Badenoch has accused Reform UK and Suella Braverman of “openly questioning people’s identity”.
In her keynote conference speech in Birmingham, the Conservative leader said she did not want to live in “a country run by people who threaten journalists, who call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children are English”.
She said: “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.
“I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing. Nobody was questioning whether they were English.
“We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English. We must not let these people take us backwards. That is not the country we are.
“Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity. They are not like us. We are not like them. We are different. We are the Conservative Party.”
Badenoch did not name Braverman. But the remarks come after the former Conservative home secretary, who defected to Reform UK last year, insisted that Englishness is “an ethnicity” for which she does not qualify.
Braverman, who is currently Reform UK’s education spokesperson, first articulated her position on Englishness last year.
In February 2025, Braverman authored an article for the Telegraph arguing that English national identity is rooted in ancestry and ethnicity, stating she considered herself British Asian but not English due to a lack of “generational ties to English soil”.
Braverman wrote: “Englishness has never been static or simple. From the arrival of the Romans to the waves of Saxons, Vikings, and Normans, English culture has always absorbed and adapted. How many generations must pass before one can claim to be English? Five? Six? It is a question without an easy answer.
“If we are to defend Judeo-Christian civilisation, British values, and the distinctiveness of English culture, there must be some form of consensus.”
In her conference speech, Badenoch said many Reform voters “are our people” and that the Conservatives “let them down, and we want them to come back home”.
She said they “deserve better than Reform politicians”.
Badenoch told Tory delegates: “A year ago, those politicians were measuring up the curtains for Number 10. Now, some of them are measuring up the curtains for their prison cells.”
She added: “So, to those who say unite the right, we are not uniting with that. People deserve better than that, and we are going to give them better than that.
“Character, conduct, and standards matter.”
Badenoch also claimed that the Conservatives had seen “an export boom of drama queens going to Reform” – a reference to defectors like Braverman, Danny Kruger, Andrew Rosindell and Robert Jenrick.
She said: “In 2024, voters gave their verdict on the rows, the plots, the infighting. Remember all that drama? That’s gone. The Conservatives have had an export boom.
“We have had an export boom of drama queens going to Reform.
“This party is now the no drama Party. We are the no nonsense party.”
