Kemi Badenoch insisted she is the only politician with the “backbone” to be honest with voters in an explosive attack on her opponents. The Conservative leader warned Sir Keir Starmer’s “dangerous” Labour Party will leave an “almighty mess” after years of endless tax hikes. But the Tory leader suggested a Nigel Farage premiership would be even worse as he would “blow up the economy” by increasing the country’s debts with an even bigger welfare state.

In a revealing interview with the Daily Expresso, our weekday news show, Mrs Badenoch vowed she will become Britain’s next prime minister.

“Everybody keeps talking like there’s an election tomorrow, but we’ve got Labour for another four years,” she said.

“Look at the mess they’ve made after that first year. There’s still more to come, I’m afraid.”

Mrs Badenoch added: “They’re going to leave an almighty mess for us to clean up. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s with Starmer or Burnham or Rayner or whoever, they’re all the same.”

She criticised Labour for failing to understand “where money comes from and how to grow an economy”.

“They’ve never run a business, they never hired people, they are just, you know, people who spend everybody else’s money,” she added.

“And so they don’t understand how to run the country. That’s what really worries me, and Starmer in particular, because it’s not just that he’s a socialist, it’s also that he is weak.

“He can’t even get his backbenches to do minor things like, you know, teeny weeny cuts in welfare. He can’t do that. He’s very weak.”

Mrs Bandenoch admitted her party had lost its way in its final years in government but insisted it is now “back on track”.

The opposition leader has faced a number of high profile defections from her party to Reform in recent months, including the first MP, Danny Kruger, to switch sides on her watch.

But she insisted “there’s a huge, huge difference between us and Reform”.

“We are a team. So the Conservative Party is not just about Kemi,” she added.

“Reform is a one man band. Without that one guy, everything falls apart.”

The Tory leader said Mr Farage does not spend time on the details in the same way as she does so his announcements “fall apart”.

She said the Reform leader is less worried about the economy than her and would push up the welfare bill with his plan to remove the two child benefit cap.

“Those are the differences, that we are fiscally responsible,” she said.

“His plans would blow up the economy, way more deficit, way more debt. We just can’t have more of that.”

Mrs Badenoch said a lot of people have lost trust in politics because politicians “make promises and then don’t deliver”.

She said Sir Keir is having “problems” because he has not been able to follow through on his election pledges.

“Nigel Farage is doing the same thing,” she added. “He’s making promises and doesn’t know how he’s going to deliver. So I’m doing the difficult thing. I’m being honest and saying there’s some things that we can’t do. I’m not going to lie to you about what we can do, but here are the things that we can’t do. We’re going to take some very tough decisions, but we will be open with people about the tough decisions.

“That’s why a lot of people have been disillusioned. And we need to give them that faith back in politics because once it disappears, you end up with anarchy.”

She said it was her job to expose where the Government is “going wrong” and , “where other parties are also not being honest”.

“And we’ve just got to say it again and again and again. I can’t worry about what Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage are doing with their parties. I need to show people that my party is the best offer that they’ve got.”

The Tory leader revealed she wants to revive Rwanda-style deportation plans to tackle the small boats crisis and insisted Britain is “not a racist country”.

And she hit out at her opponents for learning on the job as well as making promises they cannot keep.

Ahead of the Conservative Party conference next week, Mrs Badenoch insisted she is “not afraid to have a fight” as she prepared to unveil proposals taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

She added: “Everyone knows that I’m going to be announcing what we’re doing around the ECHR, but this is the conference that’s going to show how we are different from both Labour and Reform.

“We’re the only party that is both strong enough to actually do what needs to be done, tough enough, but also competent enough.

“It’s not enough just to be tough. If you are not competent, you’re just going to make a mess. And it’s definitely not enough if you don’t even know what you want to do. But we’re the only party that’s going to have the backbone and the will and the plan to get stuff done. And we’ll be showing that at conference.”

The Conservatives are trailing 20 points behind Reform UK in the polls but Mrs Badenoch insists she will beat Sir Keir at the next general election.

She said Labour are “dangerous” and “very complacent” about the world which we are living in now.

“They are dangerous because they’re also going to tax again, come the Budget,” she said.

Mrs Badenoch insisted leaving the ECHR would not be a “silver bullet” in the fight against the small boats crisis but insisted she would stop the crossings.

“You need to think about it as a whole package, not just announce we’re going to leave the ECHR and we’ll work it out afterwards. That’s not my way,” she said.

She promised to end the problem by having a proper plan in place including a “third country deterrence”.

Asked if she would bring back Rwanda, she replied: “It was working before we’d even started it. People were deciding not to bother coming. That’s what a deterrent is. A deterrent is if I get there, I’m not going to stay there.”

Mrs Badenoch dismissed Sir Keir’s claims that scrapping indefinite leave to remain for migrants is racist, adding: “Keir Starmer has always felt that immigration policy was racist right from when he was at school or university.

“He’s said this for a long time. And the real thing that annoys me is that so many people are throwing out the word racist all over the place, that the real racists are not able to come out and hide in plain sight. If you call every single thing racist rather than attack it on its merits then you lose the meaning of the word. And for someone like me, that’s a real problem because I want us to focus on the actual things that are going wrong. “

She added: “This is not a racist country.”