Kemi Badenoch accuses Nigel Farage of ‘fakery’ over ReformUK membership numbers
A digital counter on the Reform website showed a membership tally before lunchtime on Boxing Day ticking past 131,680.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Nigel Farage of “fakery” over Reform UK membership numbers, after his party claimed they had surpassed the Tories in signed-up members.
Mrs Badenoch said Reform’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically”, but Mr Farage said he would “gladly invite” a firm to “audit our membership numbers” as long as the Conservatives do the same.
The row comes after a digital counter on the Reform website showed a membership tally before lunchtime on Boxing Day ticking past the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservative Party during its leadership election earlier this year.
When the figure was announced, Mr Farage said it was an “historic moment”.
However in a thread on X later on Thursday, Mrs Badenoch said it was “a fake” and used a clock emoji to say that it was “coded to tick up automatically”.
She added that “we’ve been watching the back end” of the counter “for days”
