Kemi Badenoch rises to Nigel Farage brag and accuses him of ‘fakery’ in bitter festive spat

Kemi Badenoch has accused Nigel Farage of “fakery” as the two leaders spent their Boxing Day bickering about membership numbers.

Man-of-the-people Mr Farage sparked the spat as he bragged about Reform UK’s growing numbers while out hunting with aristocrats. The gleeful Reform chief claimed to have surpassed the Conservatives in signed-up members.

Predictably Ms Badenoch rose to the bait, alleging that the rival party’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically” – suggesting the numbers were fake. Mr Farage responded that he would “gladly” invite a firm to audit his numbers – as long as the Conservatives do the same.

On Boxing Day the Reform website claimed to have passed 131,680 members. This was the figure declared by the Tories during its leadership election earlier this year. But membership doesn’t always translate into electoral success – Labour had 564,443 in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn, but he did not become Prime Minister.

Gleeful Mr Farage said it was an “historic moment”. But rather than letting it slide, 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”

Mrs Badenoch wrote on Twitter/X: “Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”

There were 131,680 Conservative members eligible to vote during the party’s leadership election to replace Rishi Sunak in the autumn. But Mrs Badenoch claimed the party “has gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.

In response to the thread, Mr Farage said that the “Conservative brand is dying” under Mrs Badenoch’s leadership, and added: “We will gladly invite one of the Big 4 firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same.”

The official Reform X account also posted an image that it said included a “screenshot of our internal membership numbers”, which appeared to show figures at more than 134,000. In a post on X on Thursday evening, Mr Farage said that “over 5,000 people have joined Reform today”.

A research briefing published by the House of Commons Library in 2022 said comparing party membership numbers can be “difficult”, saying there is not a uniformly recognised definition of membership, or an established method to monitor it. Luke Tryl, director of the More in Common think tank, said: “Parties are notoriously opaque about this sort of thing”.

He described party membership as “very opaque and murky as a metric anyway”. He told PA news agency: “There is no doubt Reform had a very good autumn. I think they capitalised off some of Labour’s early mistakes, but also the fact the Conservative brand is still struggling. They’ve clearly got momentum.”