Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Reform UK has claimed it is now the largest political party in Britain. According to the Times newspaper, internal figures show Labour’s membership has fallen below 250,000.
Reform said it had more than 268,000 paid-up members, which would mean it has overtaken Labour to become the biggest party by membership in the UK, reported BBC.
Labour refused to comment on the accuracy of the membership figures in the Times, with a spokesperson saying they would be published in the party’s annual report.
BBC quoted the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as saying, “As we have suspected for some time, Reform has overtaken Labour to become the largest political party in British politics – a huge milestone on our journey to win the next election.
“The age of two-party politics is dead.” The party has consistently been leading in national opinion polls since the spring.
Labour’s membership has been steadily falling since Keir Starmer became leader in April 2020, according to the latest publicly available figures. Despite the party’s landslide election victory, it shed 37,000 members over the course of 2024 and reports suggest this trend has continued. In February, the LabourList website reported the party’s membership had fallen to around 309,000 and the Times says the figure has now dropped below 250,000.
A Labour Party spokesperson said, “Our membership figures are published in our annual report. We do not give a running a commentary on them throughout the year.” The Mainstream network, a new Labour campaign group which includes supporters of Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, said, “To transform Britain and defeat the far-right, Labour needs a grassroots movement in every community. “Our plummeting membership figures prove the top-down model has failed. The answer is to democratise, open up, and empower members.”
Meanwhile, the Green Party says it has seen a surge in membership since Zack Polanski took over as the party’s new leader in September, rising from around 70,000 to more than 180,000. The Conservatives do not routinely publish their membership figures. The number of Liberal Democrat members has also dropped, almost halving over the last five years to around 60,000. Your Party – the new left-wing outfit founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana – says it has 55,000 paid-up members.
