Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Nigel Farage has said he is considering taking legal action against Kemi Badenoch, as he demanded an apology from the Conservative leader for accusing him of faking Reform UK’s membership numbers.
“I’m not going to take it lying down. it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said,” Farage said on Friday. “I am asking Kemi Badenoch to apologise immediately for this intemperate outburst.”
Speaking on a Zoom call to journalists, he said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days,” adding that he was still deciding exactly which form that would take.
Reform’s chair Zia Yusuf showed the Financial Times the code and underlying data underpinning the party’s membership numbers on Friday, providing strong evidence that the tally was accurate.
The Reform leader’s comments came in response to an accusation by Badenoch on Thursday that Reform had produced “fake” numbers, after Farage claimed his party’s membership had surpassed the Tories’ for the first time.
In a post on X, Badenoch responded by claiming that Reform’s counter had been “coded to tick up automatically”.
“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 as people point this out,” she added.
The public spat is the first time Badenoch has gone on the attack against Farage and Reform, which is seen as one of the biggest threats to the Tory party as it seeks to rebuild its following its worst election defeat in history in July.
Yusuf posted a poll on X on Thursday, asking: “Should Nigel Farage sue Kemi Badenoch for libel?”
Farage said the Conservatives’ own membership figures were false and that he had evidence they included people who had resigned from the party or passed away, as he renewed calls for the Tory party to submit their membership figures to be externally audited.
The Reform leader said he would happily have his party’s membership numbers audited annually irrespective of whether the Tories agreed to do the same.
Badenoch “made a terrible mistake and she’s got this so completely, utterly wrong about us”, Farage said. “She’s going to find life a lot more difficult and bitterly regret putting this out on Boxing Day afternoon.”
The row has drawn attention to the fact that UK political parties are not required to publish their membership numbers, and there is no external body responsible for auditing or verifying figures that are published.
Though most parties release their tallies in their annual accounts or on their website, the Conservatives do not.
Reform’s online membership tracker showed on Friday the party had nearly 142,500 members, compared with the 131,680 held by the Conservatives at the time of their leadership election last month.
The FT was shown the code for calculating and displaying Reform’s online tally, as well as their dashboard created by NationBuilder, a third party application that the party uses to manage memberships and donations.
The demonstration provided strong evidence that the online counter did correspond to the number of members that had signed up to Reform.
Expanding its membership is a priority for Reform as it seeks to transform from a start-up into a credible political party.
To wage a successful ground campaign ahead of local elections in May of next year, Reform will need thousands of supporters to knock on doors canvassing voters and collecting data, as well as to stand as councillors in hundreds of seats.
Farage said on Friday that he believed “the vast majority” of people joining Reform have “never been in a political party in their life”.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens state their membership figures on their websites. The Lib Dems say they have “more than 90,000” members, while the Greens say they have “more than 59,000”.
The Labour party said it had about 370,000 members in March of this year.
The Conservative party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Credit: Source link
