Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage who is the leader of Reform UK, demanded an apology on Friday from his Conservative counterpart, Kemi Badenoch, after she derided claims that his upstart party now has more members than the Tories.
Farage announced Thursday that Reform had surpassed Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives in memberships, hailing it as a “historic moment” and branding his anti-immigration party “the real opposition.”
Badenoch, who has led the Tories since early November 2025, promptly rejected the claim.
The leader of Britain’s official opposition, after it came a distant second in July’s general election, accused Farage of “fakery.”
She argued the “digital tracker” on Reform’s website showing member numbers was “coded to tick up automatically.”
“The accusations of fraud and dishonesty made against me yesterday were disgraceful,” Farage shot back Friday.
He added Reform had “opened up our systems” to several UK media outlets “in the interests of full transparency to verify that our data is correct.”
“I am now demanding #KemiBadenoch apologises,” Farage said on X.
By Friday evening, the tracker on his hard-right party’s website claimed it now had around 143,000 members, an increase of more than 10,000 in recent days.
The centre-right Conservatives revealed in November that they had 131,680 members, while the governing Labour Party had around 370,000 a year ago.
– ‘Definition’ –
Reform, founded by Farage as the Brexit Party in 2018 but renamed in 2021, won just over 14 per cent of the vote in July’s general election, behind Labour at around 34 per cent and the Tories at nearly 24 per cent.
However, Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system meant Reform ended up with just five seats in parliament, while Labour won more than 400 and the Conservatives 121.
Recent polling aggregators show each party currently winning more than 20 per cent of the vote, with Labour and the Tories narrowly leading.
Reform, which brands itself anti-establishment as well as anti-immigration, has the two traditional parties in its sights but the Conservatives in particular.
Earlier this month, Farage said he was in talks with tech billionaire and Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, about a donation to Reform, when the pair met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Confirming the membership numbers is fraught, as UK parties are not legally obliged to publish the statistics and there is little oversight of them.
“Comparing party membership between political parties can sometimes be difficult. There is also no uniformly recognised definition of membership, nor is there an established method or body to monitor it,” a 2022 parliamentary briefing paper noted.
– ‘Difficult’ –
Sussex University politics professor, Paul Webb added that it was even more challenging with Reform.
“I have no idea as to how credible Reform’s claims are. It seems to be very difficult to find out anything much about their formal constitution or procedures — or even whether they have any,” he told AFP.
Webb noted that UK parties are meant to register a constitution with the Electoral Commission regulator, but he had not been able to verify whether Reform had ever done so.
“I therefore have no idea what exactly constitutes ‘membership’ of Reform, what the conditions of membership are, or what rights members have,” he said.
He added that at present, membership likely meant “little more than making a financial donation to the party”.
On its website, it also seemed possible to pay £25 ($31) to become a Reform member with a foreign address.
However, the Conservatives’ website appeared to require a UK address to process a new membership.
Reform did not respond to a request for comment.
AFP
