Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has threatened to sue his Tory counterpart Kemi Badenoch if she fails to apologise for accusing the populist party of faking numbers that show Reform surpassed the Conservatives in paid members.
The war of words broke out after Reform UK claimed on Boxing Day that it now has more members than the Tories. Using a live online ticker, the upstart party tracked the moment it had surpassed the latest declared membership numbers from the centuries-old Conservative Party.
After Reform passed the threshold of 131,680 members (the latest account of membership released by the Tories in November), recently-installed Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of using an automated online ticker rather than reflecting actual sign-ups.
“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,” she wrote on X.
Badenoch also claimed that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members” after she was selected as leader in November. However, the party has yet to release such figures to the public.
Following the accusation of faking its membership tally, Reform opened its books on the independent Nation Builder platform, which tracks political party membership, to several British media outlets, including Sky News.
The broadcaster reported that it “was able to verify that the number of memberships in Reform’s NationBuilder account matched the number presented on their on-site ticker.”
Mr Farage has branded Badenoch “disgraceful” for the accusations and demanded that she apologise for the “intemperate outburst.”
When asked if he planned on suing the Conservative leader for libel, the Reform leader said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days. I’ve got to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to take it lying down.”
“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said… know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”
After Reform surpassed the latest Tory figures, Mr Farage hailed the achievement as a “historic moment,” saying: “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 declared.
While the so-called Conservatives continue to reel from their devastating election defeat in July and the fledgling left-wing Labour government continues to haemorrhage support, Reform has steadily risen in the ranks.
Despite only returning to frontline politics in June, Farage is now the odds-on favourite to become the next UK prime minister, according to betting agency Ladbrokes, demonstrating the degree to which the political sands are shifting in Britain.