Nigel Farage has demanded an apology from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch after she accused his Reform UK party of publishing fake statistics showing membership surpassing that of the Tory party.
Ms Badenoch said the digital counter on Reform’s website was “coded to tick up automatically” when it recorded membership on Boxing Day morning ticking past the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservative Party earlier this year.
She accused Reform UK of “fakery”.
Demanding an apology from Ms Badenoch for what he said were “disgraceful accusations of fraud and dishonesty”, Mr Farage vowed to take action in the next two days.
And when asked by journalists whether he would take legal action, he would not rule it out.
“I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days, and I’ve got to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to take it lying down,” he said, according to The Telegraph.
“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said. I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”
He later told Press Association: “She [Ms Badenoch] has put out this crazy conspiracy theory and she needs to apologise.”
Despite the dispute, Mr Farage said people were continuing to join the party with Reform UK’s ticker showing 143,968 members on Friday night.
Labour is the UK’s biggest political party, with 370,450 members at the end of last year.
As Ms Badenoch made her claim about the Reform UK figure being false, she also suggested the Conservatives’ own membership figures had risen in recent weeks, writing on social media: “For a party that pretends to hate the establishment so much, they are copying and pasting the fake Tony Blair/Alister [sic] Campbell’s spin book.
“How do I know for certain the Reform announcement is not true? Because the Conservative Party has gained thousands of new members since the leadership election. But we don’t shout about it…we are building quietly and steadily on principles and values, not gimmicks.”
Mr Farage said he would gladly invite a firm to audit Reform UK’s membership numbers if the Conservatives did the same.
“We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership,” he wrote on social media. “However, this not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud.”
