Reform UK has become Britain’s largest party by membership, overtaking Labour after it shed 100,000 members since the general election.
Internal figures showed the Labour Party had fallen below 250,000 paid-up members, suggesting it has lost one every seven minutes since winning office in July last year.
This means Reform UK, which has 268,631 paid-up members according to its own “live counter”, is now the largest party.
Nigel Farage, the leader, told The Times: “As we have suspected for some time, Reform is now the largest political party in British politics — a huge milestone for us. The age of two-party politics is dead.”
Until now, Labour’s membership figure has been dubbed one of the party’s “most closely guarded secrets”. When Sir Keir Starmer became leader in 2020, it had more than half a million paying members and was the largest political party in Europe.
But with Jeremy Corbyn’s departure, the numbers dropped. Even after its landslide general election victory, the party shed a tenth of its membership last year.
Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have endured a difficult few months
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
It stopped providing public updates at the end of the year, when it had 333,235 members, and was even said to have kept its figures from the national executive committee for fear of leaks.
The news is another boost for Farage, who has already seen his party’s war chest filled by a massive donation of £9 million from a cryptocurrency billionaire, a record for a UK political donation. The party’s lead in the opinion polls has also remained at about ten points since the summer.
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Reform overtook the Conservative Party’s membership count on Boxing Day last year. The party’s membership has continued to fall, to about 123,000 in July this year.
The Green Party has increased its membership from 126,000 to 180,000 since October. The party declared this week that “two-party politics is over”.
Figures published in August showed the Liberal Democrats had 83,174 members, a slight fall on the year before.
Corbyn’s new party, Your Party, has drawn 50,000 members, well short of the 800,000 who expressed interest after it launched in July.
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Reform received its record donation from Christopher Harborne, the cryptocurrency investor and aviation entrepreneur, last week.
According to Electoral Commission figures, this helped Reform to bank more than £10 million between July and September, compared with £4.6 million for the Conservatives and £2.1 million for Labour.
However, the party’s good news was tempered by Essex police announcing they would assess claims Reform overspent on Farage’s election campaign in the Clacton constituency last year.
Farage speaks to supporters on Clacton Pier in Essex in 2024
LUCY NORTH/PA WIRE
A former party councillor and member of Farage’s campaign team claimed Reform exceeded the £20,660 spending limit set by electoral law. Reform said the “inaccurate claims come from a disgruntled former councillor”.
Reform has also continued to receive a steady stream of defections, including more than 20 current and former Tory MPs.
They include Jonathan Gullis, Chris Green and Lia Nici, former Tory MPs who switched allegiance at the start of this month after losing their seats at the 2024 general election.
Jonathan Gullis won a seat for the Conservatives in 2019. He lost it in 2024 and has now joined Reform
BENJAMIN WAREING/ALAMY
High-profile names to join include Sir Jake Berry, the former Conservative chairman; the former cabinet ministers Nadine Dorries and David Jones; and Danny Kruger, the MP for East Wiltshire.
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Donors recently claimed Farage had told them a pact with the Conservative Party was inevitable, which he denied, instead saying he was aiming for a “reverse takeover” with further defections.
Reform stood by the accuracy of its live counter. A source said: “Every single number on the Reform counter is a paid-up member. It projects in real time and is never more than a few thousand up or down.”
After Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, accused Reform of “fakery” last December, Reform posted internal screenshots of membership figures to back up its public counter.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Our membership figures are published in our annual report. We do not give a running commentary on them throughout the year.”
