EPA
Conservative 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.
A digital tracker on Reform’s website shows its membership numbers have overtaken the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservatives earlier this year.
Badenoch said Reform’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically”.
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.
When the figure was announced on Boxing Day, Farage said it was a “historic moment”.
Reacting to the growing tally on X, he said: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world.”
Party chairman Zia Yusuf said Reform had broken the “centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics by the Tories”.
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”.
“Farage doesn’t understand the digital age,” Badenoch added. “This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”
In a tweet responding to Badenoch, Farage said he had 5.4m social media followers and said she had 320,000.
Farage contended that Badenoch was “bitter, upset and angry” at the membership figures.
“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.
Later on F
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