Tories and Reform in bitter war of words over Giorgia Meloni meeting with Kemi Badenoch_D

Kemi Badenoch has been accused of making up a “pack of lies” about advice she reportedly received from the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni.

In a now redacted news article by a national newspaper, Ms Meloni was reported to have told the Tory leader that a deal with Reform UK would be “monstrous”.

But a furious Robert Jenrick, who defected from the Conservative Party to Reform UK earlier this year, lambasted his former leader.

Mr Jenrick told the Daily Express: “My advice is if you go and visit a foreign leader, don’t make up a pack of lies about what they say, that can hurt your relationship.

“I have meetings with people … Nigel has meetings with leaders around the world, they’re kept private, that is the way to do things, that is how you conduct yourself.”

Mr Jenrick, who now serves as Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman, was speaking at an event in London. Prior to his defection, he lost the race for leadership of the Conservative Party to Mrs Badenoch.

He said that Reform could tell she had “made it up” as “that is what she is like” before going on to say his former boss “lives in a fantasy world”.

He concluded his tirade against the Tory chief, saying: “There’s a lot of fantasies going on at the moment, in Kemi’s mind.”

Their ongoing feud follows the Tory leader’s ejection of him from the party earlier this year.

During his response to this paper Mr Jenrick claimed Ms Badenoch had fabricated aspects of her CV, saying “she made up she got a degree offer from an American University”.

This was a reference to a claim Mrs Badenoch has made in interviews where she suggested she had been offered a place to study medicine at Stanford University.

Admissions officials at the university have since suggested no such place had been offered.

At the time of his ejection and subsequent defection that same day, an ally of Mrs Badenoch branded Mr Jenrick a “coward”, with another accusing him of being “a traitor”.

“We should have bulleted him a lot earlier,” said another, as they accused Mr Jenrick of being fuelled by “deceit and dishonesty”.

This latest escalation in the war of words between the pair comes as Mrs Badenoch is in Italy over the summer recess.

Mrs Badenoch and the Italian prime minister have met several times and describe one another as friends.

A Conservative Party spokesman said: “The Conservatives have not made any false claims.

“Reform are just making things up and peddling conspiracy theories to distract from their fishy £5 million donation scandal, and the police investigation into Robert Jenrick.”