Israeli journalist Yair Lapid has criticised the Kadima party as “a bunch of cynical politicians”.

Mr Lapid, who announced that he was planning to run for the Knesset at the next election, said there was no way he would join the centrist party, which is led by Tzipi Livni.

“They're a bunch of cynical politicians who have been cast out from other parties,” said Mr Lapid, 48, a popular media personality tipped for political heights. “No one has any clue as to what, if anything, they believe in and there is no chance I am joining them."

Kadima was set up as a splinter party in 2005, following then prime minister Ariel Sharon’s controversial Gaza disengagement plan. Led by Mr Sharon and then by prime minister Ehud Olmert, the party lost power to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud at the last elections.

Mr Lapid also denied that he would join the left-wing Labour party, seen as a declining force in Israeli politics. He told his Facebook supporters that although he admired the party’s leader Shelly Yachimovitch – another former journalist – he had no ideological connection with the “radical Left”.

He did not state which party would gain his support, but added: “I will join any government that accepts my core principles: changing the governing system [and] changing the distribution of resources for the benefit of the middle class."