LONDON — Nigel Farage has challenged the main U.K. opposition Conservative Party to carry out an audit of its membership figures after claiming his upstart Reform UK had eclipsed it.
The Brexiteer used the festive period to declare Reform the “real opposition,” unveil a flashy “ticker” to count up new recruits and claim his party had passed the 131,680 membership figure the Tories revealed at the time of the Conservative leadership contest in November.
That contest’s victor, Kemi Badenoch , swiftly took to X to accuse Farage of “manipulating” support, suggesting the membership tracker had been “coded to tick up automatically.”
In response, Farage said he would allow one of the “Big Four” accountancy firms to audit Reform’s membership — if the Conservatives did the same. He said he had been contacted by “many Tory whistleblowers” saying that during the leadership contest ballots were sent to long-expired or resigned members. The Conservatives have not responded to the challenge.
The upstart Reform UK party caused serious damage to the Conservatives at the summer election, winning 4 million votes and five members of parliament. It now has the governing Labour Party in its sight, with one poll this month putting Farage’s outfit ahead of Keir Starmer’s party.
The war of words between Reform and the Tories began when a flat cap-sporting Farage attended a traditional “Boxing Day” fox hunt Thursday morning, where he invited his favorite GB News TV channel to hear him gloat about the “historic moment” his party overtook the Conservatives.
He said 15,000 members had stumped up £25 to join the party in the previous four days, as Reform deployed a video of its ticker being projected onto Conservative HQ, turning the street the party’s color turquoise and blaring: “Merry Christmas, Kemi!”
In response, Badenoch cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures, saying: “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 … Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”
Farage shot back on X, saying: “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.”
Reform Chair Zia Yusuf later showed screenshots purporting to be evidence of the membership figures.
Critics of both parties were quick to point out that membership figures do not always equate to electoral success. Former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn racked up around 560,000 enthusiastic members before crashing to the worst defeat in his party’s history in 2019. The May local elections will be a big test to see if Farage can translate this support base into council seats.
New YouGov polling in the Times shows none of the party leaders are a hit with the public. Starmer’s net favorability stands at -41, with Farage’s -34 and Badenoch on -31.
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