Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said the party now has more than 200,000 members and is aiming to overtake the Labour Party’s total of 309,000.
Speaking to delegates at a regional conference in Wiltshire, the Clacton MP called his party’s growth “truly extraordinary” since its founding in 2021 as the re-launch of the Brexit Party.
With the party’s live membership ticker displayed on a screen behind him, he said it was on course to become “the biggest political party in this country”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told delegates the party had more than 200,000 members. Pic: PA
“That’s our goal. That’s our aim. That’s our target,” he said.
Reform UK is already ahead of the Conservatives, who revealed in November that almost 132,000 members were eligible to vote during the party’s leadership election to replace Rishi Sunak.
Referring to last year’s row with new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, when she doubted Reform’s total membership, he said the party “got people to come in and check and look at the back end, and it’s all absolutely legit”.
Reflecting on Reform UK’s rapid growth, he said: “In the modern world to have got here this quickly, isn’t it truly extraordinary?
“Doesn’t it show you something is happening in this country? People want real political leadership. They want real change. That’s what that tells you.”
The party polled more than four million votes in last year’s election, winning five seats, including Mr Farage’s Essex constituency.
Mr Farage, the former head of UKIP, had ruled himself out of standing but made a U-turn after saying he had a “terrible sense of guilt” for not offering to run.
In another sign of its growing threat to the main parties, last week, Reform UK came top in a poll of people who voted Conservative at the last election.
Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch doubted Reform UK’s membership claims. File pic: PA
Switching his focus to their political opponents, he declared that “when we overtake [the Labour Party], we will be the biggest political party in this country”.
The Tories had “betrayed the country with open door immigration, increased taxes, with not delivering Brexit”, he said.
“A 10 million increase in the population of this country over the course of the last 20 years has devalued the living standards of everybody in this country,” Mr Farage added.
“It’s truly incredible. The wave of people that came under Boris Johnson from 2021, of the millions that came, only 20% are working or contributing. The rest are costing us, the taxpayer. It’s an outrage.”
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Spelling out Reform UK’s key platform, he said: “Anyone that comes here illegally will be deported. Simple as that.
“We’re the only party that says ‘no more population increase through immigration for many years to come’.”
Calling it “the one net zero I approve of”, he said the UK “hasn’t got enough houses, we can’t get GP appointments, our roads are completely overloaded, our infrastructure is crumbling”.