Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Nigel Farage of “fakery” over claims that Reform UK membership has surpassed that of the Conservatives, making it the second largest political party in the UK.
Ms Badenoch said Reform’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically”, but Mr Farage said he would “gladly invite” a firm to “audit our membership numbers” as long as the Conservatives do the same.
The row comes after a digital counter on the Reform website showed a membership tally before lunchtime on Boxing Day ticking past the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservative Party during its leadership election earlier this year.
Mr Farage said it was a “historic moment”, as he posted on X/Twitter: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world.
“Reform UK are now the real opposition.”
However, in a thread on X later on Thursday, Ms Badenoch said it was “a fake” and used a clock emoji to say that it was “coded to tick up automatically”.
She added that “we’ve been watching the back end” of the counter “for days”.
Ms Badenoch said: “Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”
Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) December 26, 2024
It’s not real. It’s a fake ⏰ coded to tick up automatically. We’ve been watching the back end for days and can also see they’ve just changed the code to link to a different site as people point this out.
Farage doesn’t… https://t.co/2tAsszfHsG
There were 131,680 Conservative members eligible to vote during the party’s leadership election to replace Rishi Sunak in the autumn, but Ms Badenoch claimed in her thread that “the Conservative Party has gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.
In response to the thread, Mr Farage said that the “Conservative brand is dying” under Ms Badenoch’s leadership, and added: “We will gladly invite one of the Big 4 firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same.”
The official Reform X account also posted an image that it said included a “screenshot of our internal membership numbers”, which appeared to show figures at more than 134,000.
A research briefing published by the House of Commons Library in 2022 said comparing party membership numbers can be “difficult”, saying there is no uniformly recognised definition of membership, nor an established method to monitor it.
Luke Tryl, director of the More in Common think tank, similarly told the PA news agency it is an “opaque” process.
Party chair Zia Yusuf claimed that Mr Farage “will be the next prime minister, and will return Britain to greatness”, adding: “History has been made today, as the centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics by the Tories has finally been broken.”
Before Mr Farage took over as leader of the party in June, Reform UK only had 40,000 members.
The party, which has been on a push to boost its membership in recent weeks, has seen a number of significant Conservative defections to its ranks, including former Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns and the founder of the Conservative Home website Tim Montgomerie.
There have also been growing rumours that tech billionaire Elon Musk is considering donating tens of millions of dollars to Reform UK after Mr Farage met with him at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion alongside the party’s new treasurer, Nick Candy.
Mr Farage has repeatedly insisted he knows nothing about a potential contribution to Reform from Mr Musk, but said that the party would take the money if it were offered.
Mr Musk is reported to have spent more than $250m (£197m) in his campaign to re-elect Mr Trump. Mr Farage has been criticised for travelling to the US on a number of occasions since his election as the new MP for Clacton in July.
During the Tory leadership race over the summer, which saw Kemi Badenoch elected to replace Rishi Sunak, there were 131,680 Conservative members eligible to vote.
The figure, revealed as Ms Badenoch was announced as the new Tory leader on 2 November, was the lowest on record and marked a drop from the 2022 leadership contest when there were around 172,000 members.
It comes after the party suffered a historic election defeat in July, which saw its Commons contingent reduced to just 121 MPs – the fewest in its history. Labour’s membership stood at around 370,000 in August.
Reform UK returned five MPs to the Commons at the general election after securing 4 million votes.
A Conservative Party spokesperson said: “Reform has delivered a Labour government that has cruelly cut winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, put the future of family farming and food security at risk, and launched a devastating raid on jobs which will leave working people paying the price.
“A vote for Reform this coming May is a vote for a Labour council – only the Conservatives can stop this.”
