The Conservative leader has faced months of questions over his ambitions, including whether he planned to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – but Badenoch made a move first, as Whitehall editor Kate Devlin and political editor David Maddox report

Robert Jenrick ruled out a move to Reform UK just weeks before he was sacked due to "irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect'' from the Conservative Party.…

Reform leader Nigel Farage said ‘of course’ he has had conversations with the now former senior Tory Jenrick