Reform UK membership tops 200,000 as Farage sets goal to ‘overtake’ Labour
The Clacton MP called his party’s growth ‘truly extraordinary’.
Reform UK has more than 200,000 members, leader Nigel Farage announced, as he set out the party’s next goal to overtake the membership of the Labour Party.
The Clacton MP called his party’s growth “truly extraordinary” at a Reform UK regional conference event in Wiltshire.
He held up a placard saying “200,000 members”.
He then pointed to a screen displaying the party’s live membership ticker on their website and said the message would change when he came off stage.
“That message will say, as I leave this stage, it’ll change, and it will say that the Labour Party have 309,000 members, and when we overtake them, we will be the biggest political party in this country.
“That’s our goal. That’s our aim. That’s our target,” he said.
Reform UK unveiled the membership counter late last year.
On Boxing Day, Mr Farage called it a “historic moment” when it ticked past the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservative Party during its latest leadership election.
He has now set his sights on topping Labour’s membership.
Membership figures are difficult to compare as parties are not obligated to publish them and there is no uniform definition of membership and no established way or body to monitor it.
The Labour List website reported this week that the Labour Party’s paid-up members currently number around 309,000, which it said was down from around 348,500 in July last year.
The Labour Party’s last membership figure published in its Electoral Commission accounts was around 370,000 at the end of 2023.
A Labour source said: “While Nigel Farage is busy fighting with the Conservatives and saying he’s ‘open to anything’ when it comes to charging people for NHS services, the Labour Government is getting on with delivering the Plan for Change and turning our country around to boost growth and put more money in people’s pockets.”
The Conservative Party revealed in November that 131,680 Conservative members were eligible to vote during the party’s leadership election to replace Rishi Sunak in the autumn.
This was the lowest Tory level on record and a drop from the 2022 leadership contest when there were around 172,000 members.
Reform UK has rejected the possibility of doing a pact with the Conservative Party or former prime minister Boris Johnson in response to reports of potential talks to form a “mega party”.
“There are absolutely no circumstances in which Reform would ever do a pact with Boris Johnson or the Conservative Party,” chairman Zia Yusuf said at the Wiltshire conference, reading out a statement also posted online.
