Farage hits out at 'bitter' Badenoch over claims Reform UK 'faked' membership milestone
Kemi Badenoch says Nigel Farage doesn't have the experience to tackle the country's biggest problems
GB News
Nigel Farage has hit back at Kemi Badenoch's claims that the Reform UK's membership ticker is "fake."
The Tory leader had taken to social media to accuse Reform of 'manipulating' its members over the counter, which showed the party had overtaken the Conservatives.
Badenoch wrote on X: "Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas, Nigel? It’s not real. It’s a fake...coded to tick up automatically. We’ve been watching the back end for days and can also see they’ve just changed the code to link to a different site as people point this out.
"Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled...like many of you, I am sick of the endless lies, smoke and mirrors, stuff and nonsense politics. "
Farage has responded to Badenoch's claims
PA/Getty
Now, party leader Nigel Farage has hit back over the claims, saying: "Kemi says I don’t understand the digital age. I have 5.4 million followers and she has 320k.
"We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership.
"However, this not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud. We will gladly invite one of the Big Foue firms in to audit our membership numbers as long as you do the same.
"We have heard from many whistleblowers that will swear under affidavits that ballots were sent out to long expired or resigned ex-members. It’s an open secret at CCHQ that your membership numbers are fake."
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Reform UK membership has officially overtaken the Tory partyReform UKReform chairman Zia Yusuf said: "Oh Kemi, repeatedly calling yourself an 'engineer' doesn’t mean you know anything about technology. You cannot see our 'back end' just by looking at a webpage.
"The page polls from an endpoint which fetches the live member number from Nationbuilder’s API.
"As Nigel Farage says, we will gladly invite a Big 4 audit firm to verify our membership numbers on the basis that you do the same.
"You just talked an awfully big game Kemi, will you take us up on this? Or are you the same as your predecessors - a compulsive liar?"
Speaking about the numbers, Badenoch had said: "The Conservative Party is under new leadership and 2025 is going to be about hard, unvarnished truths.
"Many of those truths will be difficult for my party and for the country. We’re in opposition because previous governments made mistake. We HAVE to do things differently.
"We won’t fix what has gone wrong over the last 30 years with rage, but with courage. Telling the truth takes bravery."
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