Businessman Arron Banks has slammed some of his West of England mayoral rivals as "political consultants that will achieve sod all". The co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, who was previously one of the largest donors to UKIP, was reprimanded by a fellow candidate calling his comment on a BBC debate show "rude".

When given 30 seconds at the end of the heated discussion to make his pitch for Reform UK, Mr Banks said: "I started a business in Thornbury High Street above Asda and seven years later I floated it on the stock market for £147 million. I'm the only candidate here that will actually get anything done. The rest are a bunch of political consultants that will achieve sod all..."

One candidate can be heard intervening to say "so rude".

The BBC host was unable to give any candidate a chance to respond as the show came to an end.

Sharing the clip online, Mr Banks commented: "Heated BBC Radio Bristol debate - I finally get fed up of the 4 political consultant candidates standing for the other parties! What a bloody shower."

The six candidates in the race to be mayor had been quizzed on subjects such as housing, buses and education.

Reform UK has denied Mr Banks offered a “bribe” to a Conservative MP to defect.

Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a former Tory MP who has since switched to Reform, claimed before the general election that Arron Banks had offered £80,000 to defect to Reform.

The Times has seen a WhatsApp message from Jenkyns - who is standing to be Reform's mayor of Greater Lincolnshire - to a colleague in which she says Banks “tried to bribe me”.

“Reform’s Mr Banks offered to match my MPs salary with a job in his company if I defected to Reform,” it read. “This is Reform’s modus operandi; look How former Conservative MPs have publicly said Reform tried to bribe them to defect too.”

She had previously spoken about the financial offer, made at a time Reform was trying to persuade MPs to join their ranks.

Mr Banks donated more than £8 million to the Leave campaign before the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Reform denied the claim made in the WhatsApp message.

“This bogus allegation is from before the 2024 general election and she never joined,” a spokesman said. “No party official has ever offered Andrea or anyone else monetary compensation for joining the party.”

Mr Banks declined to comment, telling The Times on Tuesday: “I’m not really interested in text messages … write what you want to write.” He later added: “I don’t comment on leaks and text messages that may or may not be correct, so there we go.”