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Nigel Farage has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker showing Reform UK’s membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.

The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s assertion that he was “manipulating [his] own supporters” with a ticker that is “coded to tick up automatically” after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members – the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn.

He is demanding an apology from Ms Badenoch for the “accusations of fraud and dishonesty” that he labelled “disgraceful”, and said he is “not going to take it lying down”.

Asked by Sky News in a call with journalists if he is going to sue the Tory leader for libel, Mr Farage said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days. I’ve got to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to take it lying down.”

“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said,” he continued. “I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”

He added that he will confirm within two days exactly what this action will be if she does not apologise for the “intemperate outburst”.

Analysis: Badenoch needs to pick her battles

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

A Tory source told Sky News: “Fake Farage is clearly rattled that his Boxing Day Publicity Stunt is facing serious questions over a fake clock and hundreds of ‘members’ seemingly joining in the middle of the night.

“Like most normal people around the UK, Kemi is enjoying Christmas with her family and looking forward to taking on the challenges of renewing the Conservative Party in the New Year.”

‘It’s a fake’

The row started after Reform UK said on Boxing Day that it officially had more members than the Conservative Party, which Mr Farage, 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 video of the membership tracker being projected on to the Conservative Party headquarters in London.

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of issuing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”

Posting on X, she added that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.

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

Do Reform’s claims stack up?

Ben van der Merwe

Data journalist

@_bvdm

Some tickers are indeed “coded to tick up automatically”. This is often done when the data isn’t updated regularly and so, in the meantime, the counter is made to increase at realistic intervals.

Any ticker showing government debt, unemployment or global temperatures, for instance, is almost certainly going up at a regular, pre-programmed rate.

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

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

The chart above shows the number of new members added every 30 minutes during that 22-hour stretch.

What we can see is that it varies a lot – very few people join overnight, and there is a big surge from around 11am on Boxing Day.

This was around the time that it was first reported Reform UK had acquired more members than the Conservatives, which provided a burst of publicity to the party.

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

Political parties in the UK aren’t required to reveal their membership numbers, much less provide data that can be independently verified.

However, Reform UK did show 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 in Reform’s NationBuilder account matched the number presented on their on-site ticker.

The Conservative Party had 131,680 members as of the November leadership contest, while Labour had 366,604 members as of March 2024.

Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf also waded into the row, claiming that people whose memberships of the Tory party had lapsed voted in the autumn leadership election that saw Ms Badenoch elected to the role.

In a call with journalists earlier, he repeated the assertion, 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 party members, he said he has received “just 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 has said it will submit to an audit of its membership numbers by one of the “big four” accountancy firms if the Tories do the same.

Farage gets personal

Speaking to journalists earlier, Mr Farage was very critical of Ms Badenoch personally, saying her claim that their membership number ticker had been faked “reflects her personality”.

He labelled her “aggressive” and “liable to lashing out”, and said he thinks she wrote her tweet out of a “slight sense of anger”.

“She’s got to fully disprove this, and she’s going to find life a lot more difficult and bitterly regret putting this out on Boxing Day afternoon,” he added.

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Labour plans to ‘overhaul broken asylum system’

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Labour plans to 'overhaul broken asylum system'

After a summer dominated by criticism over the small boats crisis and asylum hotels, Labour says it’s planning to overhaul the “broken” asylum system.

As MPs return to Westminster today, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will speak about the government’s success in tackling people smugglers and plans for border security reform.

August saw the lowest number of Channel crossings since 2019 - but the last year has the most on record. Pic: Reuters
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August saw the lowest number of Channel crossings since 2019 – but the last year has the most on record. Pic: Reuters

Labour hopes that the raft of changes being proposed will contribute to ending the use of asylum hotels, an issue which has led to widespread protests over the summer.

Ms Cooper will set out planned changes to the refugee family reunion process to give “greater fairness and balance”, and speak to the government’s promise to “smash the gangs” behind English Channel crossings.

National Crime Agency (NCA) figures show record levels of disruption of immigration crime networks in 2024/25. Officials believe this contributed to the lowest number of boats crossing the Channel in August since 2019.

But, despite the 3,567 arrivals in August being the lowest since 2021, when looking across the whole of 2025, the figure of 29,003 is the highest on record for this point in a year.

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Labour says actions to strengthen border security, increase returns and overhaul the asylum system, will result in “putting much stronger foundations in place so we can fix the chaos we inherited and end costly asylum hotels”.

In a message to Reform UK, which has promised mass deportations, and the Tories, who want to revive the Rwanda scheme, Ms Cooper will say: “These are complex challenges, and they require sustainable and workable solutions, not fantasy promises which can’t be delivered.”

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The town at boiling point over migration

While the home secretary will look back at the UK’s “proud record of giving sanctuary to those fleeing persecution”, she will argue the system “needs to be properly controlled and managed, so the rules are respected and enforced, and so governments, not criminal gangs, decide who comes to the UK”.

She will also give further details around measures announced over the summer, including the UK’s landmark returns deal with France, and update MPs on reforms to the asylum appeals process.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp dismissed Ms Cooper’s intervention as a “desperate distraction tactic”, reiterating record levels of illegal Channel crossings, the rise in the use of asylum hotels and the highest number of asylum claims in history in Labour’s first year.

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Richard Tice reveals how navy would deal with small boats

Sir Keir Starmer too, says he intends to “deliver change,” using a column in Monday’s Mirror to criticise the Tories and Reform UK for whipping up migrant hatred.

And the prime minister isn’t the only one to hit out at Reform UK’s flagship immigration plan, with the Archbishop of York accusing it of being an “isolationist, short-term kneejerk” approach, with no “long-term solutions”.

In response, Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips the archbishop was “wrong” in his criticism.

Anti-asylum demonstrators in Epping, Essex. Pic: PA
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Anti-asylum demonstrators in Epping, Essex. Pic: PA

Mr Tice, who is the MP for Boston and Skegness, said he was a Christian who “enjoys” the church – but that the “role of the archbishop is not actually to interfere with international migration policies”.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal will hand down its full written judgment in the Bell Hotel case today, which saw Epping Forest District Council fail in an attempt to stop asylum seekers from being put up there.

Protests continued in Epping on Sunday night, with police arresting three people.

An anti-asylum demonstration also took place in Canary Wharf on Sunday, which saw a police officer punched in the face and in a separate incident, a child potentially affected by synthetic pepper spray.

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Murder investigation launched after man fatally stabbed in Luton

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Murder investigation launched after man fatally stabbed in Luton

A murder investigation has been launched after a man was fatally stabbed in Luton, Bedfordshire, on Sunday.

Police said officers were called to Humberstone Road just after 6pm after reports of an altercation involving two men and a woman.

A man in his 20s was taken to hospital with serious injuries but was pronounced dead shortly after.

Police are appealing for any further information, including doorbell, CCTV, or dashcam footage from the area around the time of the incident.

Superintendent Rachael Glendenning, from Bedfordshire Police, said: “This is an isolated incident, and we would ask the public not to speculate at this time.”

She said officers will be at the scene for a significant period while the investigation continues.

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British woman stabbed to death in Cambodia over ‘love triangle’, police say

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British woman stabbed to death in Cambodia over 'love triangle', police say

A British woman has been stabbed to death in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, police have said.

Local media have named the victim as 34-year-old Jessica Cariad Hopkins.

Deputy commissioner general and commissioner of Phnom Penh Police Chuon Narin said the victim was found dead with stab wounds near a popular park in the capital’s Chamkarmon district on Friday.

A 33-year-old woman, also believed to be a foreign national, was arrested in connection with the stabbing on Saturday afternoon.

Mr Narin said the motive for the killing was believed to be a love triangle.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office say they are supporting the family of the victim and are in contact with local authorities.

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