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EPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nConservative leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Nigel Farage of “fakery” over Reform UK membership numbers, after his party said they had surpassed the Tories in signed-up members.<\/p>\n
A digital tracker on Reform’s website shows its membership numbers have overtaken the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservatives earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Badenoch said Reform’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically”.<\/p>\n
Farage has demanded an apology from Badenoch after earlier saying he would “gladly invite” a firm to audit the party’s membership numbers as long as the Conservatives did the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
When the figure was announced on Boxing Day, Farage said it was a “historic moment”.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the growing tally on X, he said<\/a>: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world.”<\/p>\n Party chairman Zia Yusuf said Reform had broken the “centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics by the Tories”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a thread on X on Thursday, Badenoch said it was a “fake”, and used a clock emoji to say that it had been “coded to tick up automatically”.<\/p>\n “Farage doesn’t understand the digital age,” Badenoch added. “This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”<\/p>\n In a tweet responding to Badenoch, Farage said he had 5.4m social media followers and said she had 320,000.<\/p>\n Farage contended that Badenoch was “bitter, upset and angry” at the membership figures.<\/p>\n “We will gladly invite one of the Big 4 firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same,” Farage said.<\/p>\n Later on Friday, he wrote on X that Reform’s “membership numbers are correct and have now been verified by the media”. <\/p>\n Reform had posted extracts from media outlets, including the Financial Times, the Telegraph and Sky News, saying the party had shown them evidence that the figures were accurate.<\/p>\n Farage added: “Kemi Badenoch says she wants to rebuild trust in politics. She should start by apologising to me.”<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Conservative Party said it had 131,680 members eligible to vote during its leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak.<\/p>\n It was the lowest recorded membership for the party and a considerable drop from the 2022 leadership contest, when it boasted around 172,000 members.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A Conservative spokesman said Reform had “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”.<\/p>\n “A vote for Reform this coming May is a vote for a Labour council – only the Conservatives can stop this,” he added.<\/p>\n A Labour spokesperson said that while the Conservatives and Reform picked “fights” the government was “getting on with delivering the change the British people voted for”. <\/p>\n