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Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch accused each other’s party of having fake membership numbers on Thursday after Reform UK claimed it had more members than the Conservatives for the first time.
Reform said it had more than 135,000 members on Thursday, according to the party’s live online tally, surpassing the 131,860 Tory members at the time Badenoch was elected as leader of the opposition last month.
“This is a big, historic moment,” Farage said on Thursday. “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world. Reform UK are now the real opposition.”
But Tory leader Badenoch claimed the Reform numbers were “not real” and that the online tally was “fake” and “coded to tick up automatically”.
“Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?” she said in a post on X. Badenoch added that the Tories had gained “thousands” of new members since she was elected leader.
Farage responded saying he would “gladly invite one of the Big 4 firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same”.
“It’s an open secret at CCHQ that your membership numbers are fake,” he added, referring to Conservative party headquarters.
A Brexit campaigner and now MP, Farage has sought to capitalise on the Tories’ worst defeat in history at the July general election and claimed at a press conference this month that the Tory “brand is broken”.
Reform has climbed in opinion polls since the general election, when it won five MPs on a vote share of 14 per cent. Polling averages this month put it at 23 per cent, not far off the Tories at 25 per cent and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party at 26 per cent.
Farage has also been buoyed by defections from the Tories and endorsements from powerful figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk, sparking alarm in both the Conservative and Labour party, though the next UK general election is not expected until as late as 2029.
Farage has sought to bolster Reform’s ground campaign particularly in areas where it has garnered support in past elections, such as Essex, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Wales.
The party has said it wants to emulate the electoral tactics employed by the Liberal Democrats, who have typically targeted smaller numbers of seats in local and national elections, honing their messaging and policy platforms to the electorate in those regions.
Reform is trying to recruit thousands of supporters willing to canvas and collect data for the party, as well as stand as councillors in local elections next year. The party is hoping to win hundreds of council seats at local elections in May, as well as at least one mayoralty.
Reform received a boost this month when Farage met Musk in the US and said the tech billionaire was considering making a major donation to his populist party.
A significant financial contribution could help transform Reform’s fortunes, allowing it to finance a huge expansion of its ground operation and advertising campaign to further grow its base.
Several Conservatives have defected to Reform in recent weeks, including former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, and the husband of former home secretary Suella Braverman.
Former Tory donor Nick Candy also defected to the party earlier this month to become its treasurer and lead fundraiser. He pledged to donate at least £1mn of his own money.
The Labour party has about 370,000 members, down from its peak of 564,500 in 2017 when a flurry of people joined in support of then-leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Liberal Democrats have about 80,000 members, while the Green party has around 50,000.
UK political parties are not required to publish membership numbers. Though most parties publish their tallies in their annual accounts, the Conservatives do not.
At the time of the party leadership election last month, the chair of the 1922 committee said that the number of “eligible electors” in the party was 131,680.
