Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch were on Boxing Day engaged in an extraordinary political fight over party membership numbers, accusing each other of faking their figures.
It began after Reform UK claimed to have overtaken the Tories in terms of paid-up members, projecting the total onto Conservative Party Headquarters.
This led Badenoch to accuse Nigel Farage of “fakery”, drawing a response from Farage, Reform UK’s leader, who said: “It’s an open secret at CCHQ that your membership numbers are fake.”
After a ticker on Reform’s website which was counting the party’s growing membership surpassed 131,680, which Reform claimed was the Tory membership, Farage said: “This is an historic moment.
“The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world.
“Reform UK are now the real opposition.”
He also tweeted Badenoch a picture of the projection (below) saying “Merry Christmas @kemibadenoch.” This drew an angry response from Badenoch, who said: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel? It’s not real. It’s a fake [clock] 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.”
The Opposition leader also claimed the Tories had added “thousands” of new members since she was elected as leader in November and therefore she knows “for certain the Reform announcement is not true”.
She added: “Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”
There is no way of verifying Reform’s figures, which surpassed 136,000 on Thursday night. The Conservative Party also does not publish its membership numbers.
Reform based its Tory total on how many ballots were sent out in the leadership election won by Badenoch.
Reform also appeared to anticipate reaching the total in advance, recording a video of activists projecting a ticker on to Tory headquarters on Christmas Day, while Farage was filmed having a beer at a Boxing Day hunt when the figure was apparently reached.
Responding to Badenoch on X, Farage accused her of being “bitter, upset and angry”.
He said: “Kemi says I don’t understand the digital age. I have 5.4m followers and she has 320k.
“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.
“However, this is not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud. We will gladly invite one of the Big 4 firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same.
“We have also heard from many Tory whistleblowers that will swear under affidavits that ballots were sent out to long-expired or resigned ex-members in your leadership election.
“It’s an open secret at CCHQ that your membership numbers are fake.”
The row highlights the emergence of Reform as a threat to both the Tories and Labour. They won more than four million votes in the General Election, gaining five seats and coming second in 98.
Reform has now set its sights on making gains at a local level in May’s local elections.
The Conservatives are nevertheless likely to be concerned about the numbers with Reform breathing down the necks of Kemi Badenoch’s party in the opinion polls, welcoming defectors from the Conservatives, and courting donations from potential mega-donors such as Elon Musk.
Musk, who owns X and recently met Farage and his new treasurer Nick Candy at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, responded to the claim that Reform had the greater members with a post saying: “Change is coming”.
The latest BMG Research poll for The i Paper last month put Reform on 20 per cent, behind the Tories on 27 and Labour on 29.
Luke Tryl, director of pollsters More In Common, said the figures were “clearly a sign of Reform’s momentum and strength” but pointed out that membership numbers do not necessarily translate into election performance, with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trounced by the Tories in 2019 despite having around 500,000 or more members.
Tryl posted on social media: “[Reform is] building a real infrastructure and membership organisation.
“But having more very highly engaged people who join parties is not the same as more mass support – if it were, the 2019 election would have gone very differently.”
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Reform has delivered a Labour government that has cruelly cut winter fuel winter 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.”
