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Nigel Farage has said he is considering legal action against Kemi Badenoch, demanding an apology from the Conservative leader for accusing him of falsifying Reform UK membership numbers.
“I’m not going to stay still. This is an absolutely scandalous thing for him to do,” Farage said on Friday. “I call on Kemi Badenoch to immediately apologize for this intemperate outburst.”
Speaking on a Zoom call to reporters, he said: “I will take action in the coming days,” adding that he was still deciding exactly what form that would take.
Reform Party chairman Zia Yusuf showed the Financial Times the code and data behind the party’s membership numbers on Friday, providing strong evidence of the count’s accuracy.
The Reform leader’s comments followed an accusation of Badenoch The Reform Party produced “false” figures on Thursday, after Farage claimed his party’s membership had overtaken the Conservatives for the first time.
In a post on
“We’ve been monitoring the back end for days and can also see that they just changed the code to link to another site because people are pointing it out,” she added.
The public row is the first time Badenoch has attacked Farage and Reform, seen as one of the biggest threats to the Conservative party as he seeks to rebuild his party following its worst-ever election defeat in July.
Yusuf job a poll on X on Thursday, asking: “Should Nigel Farage sue Kemi Badenoch for defamation?”
Farage said the Conservatives’ own membership figures were false and he had evidence they included people who had resigned from the party or died, as he renewed calls for the Conservative party to submits its workforce figures to an external audit.
The Reform leader said he would be happy to have his party’s membership numbers audited each year, whether or not the Conservatives agree to do the same.
Badenoch “made a terrible mistake and she is completely wrong about us,” Farage said. “She will find life much more difficult and will bitterly regret revealing this on Boxing Day afternoon.”
The row has drawn attention to the fact that British political parties are not required to publish their membership numbers and there is no external body to audit or verify published figures.
Although most parties publish their accounts in their annual accounts or on their websites, the Conservatives do not.
The Reform Party’s online membership tracking system showed Friday that the party had nearly 142,500 members, compared to the Conservatives’ 131,680 at the time of their leadership election last month.
The FT received the code to calculate and display the Reform Party’s online tally, as well as its dashboard created by NationBuilder, a third-party app the party uses to manage memberships and donations.
The protest provided strong evidence that the online counter accurately matched the number of members who had joined the Reform Party.
Increasing its membership is a priority for the Reform Party as it seeks to move from start-up status to a credible political party.
To successfully campaign on the ground before local elections in May next year, Reformers will need thousands of supporters to knock on doors to poll voters and collect data, as well as to run as councilors in hundreds of seats.
Farage said on Friday he believed “the vast majority” of people joining the Reform Party had “never been part of a political party in their lives”.
The Liberal Democrats and the Greens publish the number of their members on their website. The Liberal Democrats claim to have “more than 90,000” members, while the Greens claim to have “more than 59,000”.
The Labor Party said it had around 370,000 members in March this year.
The Conservative Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
