Nigel Farage has claimed that Reform UK is now Britain’s biggest political party after an internal leak suggested that Labour has lost 100,000 members.
According to The Times, the paid up membership of the Labour Party has dropped to below 250,000 meaning the party has lost one person every seven minutes since winning the election 18 months ago.
With Reform officially on 268,631 paid-up members, it suggests Mr Farage’s party is the biggest in the UK in yet another blow for Sir Keir Starmer.
Mr Farage said: “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.”
It comes as Britain’s leading polling guru Sir John Curtice suggested that while Reform’s support may have plateaued following a significant surge over the course of this year, itrepresents the biggest attack on the two-party system since the Second World War.
Sir John told The Independent: “The Reform incursion, in terms of length of time being ahead of the polls, is now longer than that of the Liberal SDP Alliance in late 1981-82.”
But he added: “I think my view for a long time has been that barring exceptional circumstances for Reform, 30 per cent or just a little bit above, seems to be the plateau, because they are very, very much pursuing a niche market.
“They are running at around 50 per cent amongst those people who voted for Brexit, but no more than about 40 per cent of the population is in favour of Brexit these days.
“You’re never going to get all of that market. And they’ve just been basically hardly moving since the beginning of May. It’s very, very stable.”
He noted that while Reform support “is heavily dependent on Farage”, efforts to “dig the dirt on him” are impacting Reform at the polls.
In particular, he warned that claims Mr Farage made racist remarks as a schoolboy have had little impact on Reform votes, even if it does on left-wing ones who already dislike him.
However, the issue of racism has seen a crack in Reform.
In a problem for Mr Farage, the man who is expected to be Reform’s leader in Scotland distanced himself from his comments on English speaking in Glasgow.
On a recent visit to Scotland’s biggest city, Mr Farage described the fact that 29 per cent of children spoke English as a second language as “cultural smashing of Glasgow”.
Scottish SNP First Minister John Swinney described the comment as “racist”.
And speaking on BBC Question Time, Lord Offord, who recently defected to Reform from the Tories and is widely expected to become the leader of the party in Scotland, said “he wouldn’t use that type of language”.
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.”
