Nigel Farage has described Reform UK hitting 131,690 members as a “historic moment” after the party set up a real-time tracker on its website.
The party’s leader suggested that Reform UK now have more members than the Conservative Party, although their numbers have been disputed by Kemi Badenoch, who says they are “fake”.
Speaking from a Boxing Day fox hunt, Farage posted on X: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world. Reform UK are now the real opposition.”
Badenoch responded shortly after: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”
Zia Yusuf, party chairman, also said “history has been made today” and that the Tories’ “centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics” has “finally been broken”.
But they appear to have overlooked a similar membership surge brought about by Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party.
The number of full members moved from 190,000 in May 2015 to 515,000 in July 2016 – an influx of 325,000 new members.
It has since dropped to the lowest level in 10 years under prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.
