Half of all Conservative members think Kemi Badenoch should not lead the party into the next election, according to an exclusive Sky News Tory members poll.

The YouGov poll found 46% think the current Tory leader should stay in place when the country next goes to the polls, while 50% say she should not.

Tory members are split as to whether she will make it that far. A total of 49% think she will be out before the election, compared with 47% who think she’ll still be in place.

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The Tory leader will hope that this week’s conference in Manchester will steady her leadership.

But asked who they would prefer as leader of the Conservative Party, 46% of Tory members picked Robert Jenrick, comfortably ahead of the 39% who said Ms Badenoch. In all, 11% said neither and 4% don’t know.

The poll of 652 Conservative members was taken between 26 September and 2 October.

Having lost to Ms Badenoch a year ago, Mr Jenrick is now comfortably the members’ favourite, and would beat Boris Johnson, James Cleverly and Priti Patel. Badenoch would narrowly beat Johnson if they went head to head.

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Ms Badenoch rejects any kind of electoral pact with Reform UK at the next election, but this is out of step with Tory members.

The poll finds 64% support an electoral pact, meaning Reform and the Tories would not stand candidates against each other in target seats, while 31% do not.

Almost half of Tory members – 46% – would support a full blown merger with Reform UK, against 48% who would oppose a merger.

Party members are very clear that in a hung parliament, they would not want to see Tory MPs putting a Labour prime minister back in Number 10.

Tory members oppose a coalition with Labour by 93% to 6%. However 73% would welcome a coalition with Reform UK in a hung parliament, with 25% against.

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal request from Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, over her criminal conviction.

Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison after being convicted in December 2021 on sex trafficking charges.

Her lawyers argued she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

The nine justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sexual-abuse saga.

US President Donald Trump and his administration, which urged the court not to accept the case, have been condemned for refusing to publicly release all the files from Epstein’s case.

Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.

As usual, the justices on the highest court in the US did not explain why they turned down the appeal.

Maxwell’s legal team argued she shouldn’t have faced prosecution because of a deal that Epstein, who took his own life while in prison in 2019, made with federal prosecutors in Miami.

The 2007 agreement protected his “potential co-conspirators” from federal charges anywhere in the country, they said.

Maxwell was prosecuted in Manhattan, and the federal appeals court there ruled that the prosecution was proper.

A jury found her guilty of sex trafficking a teenage girl, among other charges.

Maxwell was given limited immunity when Mr Blanche interviewed her over the summer, allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything she said except for in the event of a false statement.

She repeatedly denied seeing any sexually inappropriate interactions involving Mr Trump, according to records released in August meant to distance the president from the disgraced financer.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.

A month later, he was found dead in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

Maxwell’s move to a lower security facility was criticised by the family of Epstein abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre, who died in April, and accusers Annie and Maria Farmer.

Describing Maxwell as a “sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions”, they said in a statement the transfer “smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better”.

When it announced in July that no additional documents from the investigation would be released, the US Justice Department declared that Epstein had killed himself, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary.

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A “client list” that US Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist, the department said.

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