Whose claim stacks up in the party supporters spat?

Nigel Farage has called Kemi Badenoch "absolutely disgusting" for accusing him of lying about Reform UK's membership numbers.

- ARCHIE MITCHELL

The leader of the insurgent populist party claimed to have overtaken the Conservatives' 131,680, surpassing 140,000 members yesterday. Farage said: "The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world." But Tory leader Badenoch has called the figures "a fake", accusing Farage of "misleading his supporters at Christmas".

The bitter row, which erupted on Boxing Day, highlights the ongoing battle between Reform and the Conservatives for second place in British politics. While Reform has just five MPs, compared with the Tories on 121, Farage used the milestone to declare his party "the real opposition".

But with the spat between the leaders deepening, The Independent looks at the truth behind Farage's assertion and Badenoch's counterclaim.

Kemi Badenoch's claim

Badenoch accused Farage of "not understanding the digital age" and pursuing a kind of fakery that is easily uncovered.

"We have been watching the back end for days," Badenoch said, a reference to the part of a website that is invisible to users and is responsible for storing and processing data. She claimed that, as X users pointed out it was "coded to tick up automatically", Reform changed the code to link to a different site.