Reform UK Membership Surpasses Conservatives, Says Party

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks at the party's annual conference at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England, on Sept. 20, 2024. Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Reform UK now has more members than the Conservatives, the Nigel Farage-led party has said.

The party made the announcement on social media platform X on Boxing Day, after it had hit the 131,681 figure.

According to a House of Commons Library research briefing, the Conservative Party had a membership of 131,680 in the run-up to its leadership election on Nov. 2.

Farage posted on X: “This is an historic moment. The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world.”

“Reform UK are now the real opposition,” Farage added.

Commenting on the announcement, academic, writer, and pollster Matthew Goodwin called it a “major shift in British politics.”

A digital counter on the Reform UK website had been showing an increasing number of members, surpassing 140,000 by Friday morning.

‘Fake’

However, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch claimed that the figures were not real.

“It’s a fake,” Badenoch wrote on X, suggesting that the number had been “coded to tick up automatically.”

Pointing out that her party’s membership figures were from nearly two months ago, the Tory leader added that “the Conservative Party has gained thousands of new members since the leadership election.”

“But we don’t shout about it … we are building quietly and steadily on principles and values, not gimmicks,” she added.

In rebuttal, Reform UK Chairman Zia Yusuf shared screenshots on X which he said showed membership data, saying the party would submit itself to an audit of its numbers if the Conservatives agree to do the same.

Comparing Numbers ‘Difficult’

A House of Commons Library research briefing on party membership from August 2022 said that comparing membership between political parties “can sometimes be difficult” because there is “no uniformly recognised definition of membership, nor is there an established method or body to monitor it.”

The briefing added that political parties are under no legal obligation to publish their membership statistics. Parties can include membership figures in their annual accounts submitted to the Electoral Commission by the end of the calendar year, but submission of membership data is entirely voluntary.

Kemi Badenoch speaks during the second day of the the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, England, on Oct. 2, 2023. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common, wrote on X that the rising number of members was “clearly a sign of Reform’s momentum and strength” and that “they’re building a real infrastructure and membership organisation.”

“But having more very highly engaged people who join parties is not the same as more mass support - if it were the 2019 election would have gone very differently,” he continued.

The More in Common director added that, “Members are important and the Tories need to rebuild their activist base to survive.”

5 Reform MPs

Reform UK is a relatively young party. It was founded in 2018 as The Brexit Party—which went on to become the largest UK party in the European Parliament in 2019—before being rebranded in 2021.

In the July 4 general election, Reform UK won 14 percent of the national vote and put five MPs in the House of Commons, taking seats from both Labour and the Conservatives.

All but one of the Reform MPs were new to the Commons, with Lee Anderson, formerly a Conservative, retaining his seat in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

Farage won Clacton in Essex, ousting the sitting Conservative MP Giles Watling.

Reform UK meber Richard Tice speaks at a press conference in London, on Jan. 4, 2023. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Richard Tice won Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire and Rupert Lowe won Great Yarmouth, which were both gained from the Conservatives.

The party won a fifth seat days later after a recount in Basildon South and East Thurrock gave candidate James McMurdock victory over Labour by just 98 votes.

Reform had been set up as a limited company, unlike other political parties, and in September, Farage announced that he would change the ownership structure and hand it over to the members.

Farage had said it was the party’s ambition to provide a “real” political opposition in the UK.