Reform UK’s membership is rapidly growing, with its online ticker showing continuous increases.  

The party claimed to surpass the Conservative Party’s 131,680 members by Boxing Day, sparking a dispute with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch over the accuracy of the figures. The controversy appears to have fueled further growth, with Reform adding over 33,000 members in a week, reaching 165,000 by Thursday.  

At this rate, the party could double the Conservative membership by the end of January. While internal projections are more conservative, Reform expects to outnumber Tory members by May’s local elections and potentially surpass Labour’s 366,000 members before the next general election.  

Reform leader Nigel Farage highlights the financial boost from new members, emphasizing the party’s independence from billionaire donors. Deputy leader Richard Tice believes this surge in grassroots support will enhance their ground campaign for the local elections.

An army of keyboard warriors?

However, independent research suggests that rather than acquiring new boots on the ground, Farage could instead be amassing an army of keyboard warriors.

According to a survey by Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University – shared with The i Paper – Reform members are less willing to pound the pavements during election campaigns than those in other parties.

If the same holds true for its new recruits – and an academic behind the research thinks it will – then it could mute the impact of Reform’s membership surge in terms of conventional campaign techniques.

Farage says the recruitment blitz is part of a wider effort to build an election-winning machine in time for local council and mayoral contests in less than four months’ time. “On the first of May, there is a big set of elections out there and we’ve got to get ready for them,” he told The i Paper.

“We’ve got four big sold-out regional events coming up in the next few days, and that will be again, the process of consolidating branches, asking people to come forward, to stand as candidates and to go through the vetting process, which is pretty strict.”

The regional conferences begin today in Leicester and continue into next weekend. The party claims that all 4,000 of the £10 members’ tickets for the events have been snapped up, despite them only being announced in the week before Christmas.

Reform wants to improve its ‘ground game’

Farage thinks the new members could help Reform with a key weakness. Unlike their more established rivals, his party does not have the data that can guide campaigners in working out which doors they should knock on at election time.

Such canvassing data can tell a party where its highest concentration of potential voters are, allowing it to pool resources to get out the vote on polling day and to target waverers who could be persuaded to come over to its side.

“It’s about getting as many people as we can organised, physically helping us, because we have one massive disadvantage compared to everybody else, and that’s called data,” the leader said.

Meanwhile, Tice, who was elected MP for Boston and Skegness in July’s general election, told The i Paper this week: “We’ve consistently been saying that we’ve got to open lots of branches and build a ground game. And that’s what kicking off the new year in election mode is doing.

“If you’ve got 155,000-plus members, you’re in a much better position than when you had 30,40, 50 thousand. So, we’ve got to hit the ground running in 2025.”

But political analysts say that the usefulness of Reform’s rising membership as an electoral asset will depend in large part on what members are willing to do for the party.

Conleth Burns, associate director for strategy and development at the More in Common think-tank, told The i Paper: “Members, if they are active, knock doors, deliver leaflets, help you build up a ground game, and that can make Reform competitive across the country… it can kind of broaden Reform’s appeal across the country.”

‘Reform members weren’t particularly active’

Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, said that a rising membership brought a party “a bit of legitimacy and momentum”, money and prospective foot soldiers who can “actually do stuff for you at elections”.

However, he said that his research made him question how active Reform’s members will be when it comes to traditional campaigning.

A survey after the July general election from the Party Members Project run out of QMUL and Sussex University found that Reform members were very active in campaigning for their party on social media but less so in their local community.

After excluding members who said they did nothing for their party at election time or responded “don’t know” when asked how they had helped, the study found that 34 per cent of Reform members delivered party leaflets compared to 47 per cent of Tory members, 50 per cent of Labour members and 59 per cent of Liberal Democrat members.

And just 21 per cent of Reform members took part in canvassing, compared to 29 per cent for the Tories, 30 per cent for Labour and 31 per cent for the Liberal Democrats.

“Reform members weren’t particularly active on the ground,” said Bale, who questions how effective this will make them at helping to win elections. “If you still think that it’s in part about people going out on a wet Wednesday evening, delivering leaflets, knocking on the doors, then they might be less useful, perhaps, than the members of the more traditional parties who are more used to doing that kind of thing.”

The academic said it was not possible to know for sure whether members who had joined Reform after the election would exhibit the same behaviour, but he added: “I would suggest that, if anything, those who were members in July were, if anything, more likely to do the offline [doorstep campaigning] stuff than those who’ve signed up since – on the grounds that fewer of them were simply jumping on a rolling bandwagon.”