Nigel Farage threatens legal action if Kemi Badenoch doesn't apologize for saying membership ticker was 'fake'

Nigel Farage has threatened to take legal action against Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologize for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker showing that Reform UK’s membership was growing to exceed the conservatives.

THE Reform United Kingdom The leader reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s claim he was “manipulating (his) own supporters” with a ticker “coded to auto-tick” after showing the right-wing insurgent party had passed 131,680 members – the number of eligible candidates. Conservative Party members during the fall leadership election.

He demands an apology from Mrs Badenoch for the “accusations of fraud and dishonesty” which he called “shameful”, and said he “would not let this happen”.

Asked by Sky News on a call with journalists whether he would sue the Tory leader for defamation, Mr Farage said: “I’m going to take action in the coming days. I have to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to sit idly by.”

“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for him to do,” he continued. “I know she has a very bad temper. I know she’s known for lashing out at people, but I’m not happy at all and I’m going to take action.”

He added that he would confirm within two days exactly what that action would be if she did not apologize for the “intemperate outburst.”

Analysis: Badenoch must choose his battles

Reform showed Sky News the coding used to link the ticker to the number of members within their account on the NationBuilder platform. The demonstration provided strong evidence that the ticker was not automated. Scroll down for the full analysis.

A Tory A source told Sky News: “Fake Farage is clearly shaken that his Boxing Day publicity stunt is facing serious questions because of a fake clock and hundreds of ‘members’ who appear to be joining in amid the night.

“Like most normal people in the UK, Kemi is enjoying Christmas with her family and is looking forward to the challenge of renewing the Conservative Party in the new year.”

“It’s a fake”

The row began after Reform UK declared on Boxing Day that it officially had more members than the Conservative Party, which Mr Farage, the party leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea, hailed as a ” historic moment”, describing his party as “the real opposition”.

Reform UK also shared a membership tracking video projected at the Conservative Party headquarters in London.

But Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of publishing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Christmas, eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s fake… (the website was ) coded so that it appears automatically.”

On X, she added that the Conservatives had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.

Reform UK hit back at Ms Badenoch, publishing a screenshot of an online register purporting to show “active memberships”.

Are the Reform Party’s claims valid?

Some tickers are in fact “coded to tick automatically”. This often happens when the data is not updated regularly and therefore, in the meantime, the counter increases at realistic intervals.

Any ticker showing government debt, unemployment, or global temperatures, for example, is almost certainly rising at a steady, pre-programmed rate.

Sky News analyzed Reform UK’s ticker to see if this was the case for its membership ticker.

Specifically, we watched a video posted by Nigel Farage on X, which shows an uninterrupted view of the counter from 4 p.m. on Christmas Day to 2 p.m. on Boxing Day.

The chart above shows the number of new members added every 30 minutes during this 22 hour period.

What we can see is that it varies a lot: very few people sign up overnight, and there is a big increase from around 11am on Boxing Day.

This was around the time it was first reported that Reform UK had gained more members than the Conservatives, providing a burst of publicity for the party.

If the ticker simply increased automatically, we would expect a much flatter line.

Political parties in the UK are not required to reveal their membership numbers, let alone provide data that can be independently verified.

However, Reform UK showed Sky News its account on Nation Builder, an independent platform widely used by political parties and campaigns to track and manage their memberships.

Sky News was able to verify that the number of memberships on Reform’s NationBuilder account matched the number shown on their on-site ticker.

The Conservative Party had 131,680 members in the November leadership race, while the Labor Party had 366,604 members in March 2024.

Britain’s reformist president, Zia Yusuf, also waded into the controversy, saying people whose Conservative party membership had expired had voted in the autumn leadership election that saw Ms Badenoch elected to the role.

On a call with reporters earlier, he reiterated that claim, and after putting out a call on social media for people to contact him if they had voted in the leadership election but are no longer members from the party, he said he had received “so many” that he has not yet been able to verify their claims.

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Ms Badenoch and the Conservative Party have been contacted for comment.

Reform UK said it would submit to an audit of its membership numbers by one of the “big four” accounting firms if the Conservatives did the same.

Farage gets personal

Speaking to reporters earlier, Mr Farage was highly critical of Ms Badenoch personally, saying her claim that their membership number had been falsified “reflects her personality”.

He called her “aggressive” and “likely to lash out,” and said he thought she wrote her tweet out of a “mild feeling of anger.”

“She has to refute this completely, and she is going to find life much more difficult and bitterly regret coming out with this on Boxing Day afternoon,” he added.