Membership of right-wing political parties: all that is solid melts into air
A war has continues between the Tories and Reform UK Ltd over which has the largest membership figures.
In a festive stunt Reform UK Ltd claimed to have overtaken the Tories. The Tories have around 120,000. On 4th January 2025 Nigel Fartage the owner of Reform UK Ltd claimed they had 170,000 ‘members’.
Fartage claimed at one point that legal action would be taken against Badenoch if she failed to apologise for saying he was lying about membership numbers. She didn’t, Fartage did nothing but now says Reform UK Ltd will oppose her in the Saffron Walden constituency at the next election (which according to UK Elections expert Mr Melon Usk will take place in February 2025)
Membership of UK political parties has been in decline since the 1950s when the Tories had over a million- albeit this was as much a social as a political structure. The largest membership in the 2000s was Labour under Jeremy Corbyn when there were over 500,000 members. Don’t expect this point to be made in any MSM commentary. Labour now has around 360,000 members.
Membership of any organisation is unlikely to be precise with unions being the most transparent as numbers are required to be reported to a Certification Officer.
In any organisation members leave, move address etc. Usually there is a period of grace before people are taken off a membership database.
Farage has claimed that the Tories are exaggerating their actual membership, but actual is an imprecise science. Reform UK Ltd MP Tice has admitted that not all members are eligible to vote in the UK, presumably the Mar A Lago branch is quite substantial.
There is another bottom line. As the name suggests Reform UK Ltd is not a political party at all but a business registered at Companies House. The majority shareholder is Farage.
Anyone paying £25 to become a Reform UK Ltd ‘member’ is actually doing no such thing. They are paying £25 into a bank account controlled by Fartage. Presumably not even he needs all the funds accumulated for his fine wining and dining activities but what happens to the money and how it is accounted for is unclear
Fartage posted on his Twitter account that 50,000 ‘members’ joined Reform UK Ltd in December. That was a very decent Christmas present- £25×50,000 into a bank account controlled by Fartage with no obvious accountability. He has also posted that four regional ‘conferences’ in January 2025 are now ‘sold out’. They are of course rallies not conferences. While Tory conferences are often attended by individuals, Labour is on a more democratic (with of course many issues) delegate basis.
Fartage also reported that the Reform UK Ltd had handed over its membership database to the Spectator, Telegraph, Sky News and the FT to scrutinise. Whether this actually happened is not known but so far silence is golden..
It almost makes the Tories look democratic…
The point of a political party’s membership is to do the essential basic work such as canvassing, etc. This is why the Tories succeeded in the 1950s and 1960s using party membership as a social gathering. It gave them a pool of people willing to do work at elections. The question is whether those who’ve paid their dues to the Reform Party Ltd will be willing to spend their time in a similar way. If they aren’t then the “party membership” is nothing more than a fan club.