Reform UK has allegedly passed the Tories in the number of members it has but Nigel Farage is talking nonsense – party membership does not equal public popularity.
His claim that Reform is now the main opposition party in Parliament is ridiculous because Reform still has only five MPs while the Tories have 121 – and it is the number of MPs that counts.
Party membership is inconsequential because it is the number of voters who support a party that matters in a general election – and even then, it is the concentration of those voters in particular constituencies that counts more because of the UK’s archaic and unfair First Past The Post system.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
So Reform UK needed 4,117,610 votes to get five seats – that’s 823,522 votes per seat. In membership terms, the party had around 50,000 members on July 4 when the election took place, so that’s 10,000 per seat.
In contrast, Labour won 411 seats from 9,708,716 votes – only 23,622 votes per seat. The party had fewer than 400,000 members at the time, so that’s roughly 1,000 members per seat.
And the Tories won 121 seats with 6,828,925 votes – 56,437 votes for every seat won. With 131,680 declared members, that’s 1,088 members per seat.
You see the problem Farage faces?
It’s not about having a larger number of party members; it’s about having a larger amount of support in the country – and a wider amount of it, so that Reform UK can take more seats. Party membership does not mean public popularity.
His nonsense claim that having a larger party membership makes his party bigger than the Conservatives comes across as propaganda; he wants people to think it’s true because then more people will vote for Reform (for example, in forthcoming local elections).
I’m thinking particularly of the “tactical vote” loonies who give up their principles for the sake of beating the party they don’t like, only to find that they’ve supported it into power by splitting the vote for the party they really want.
Farage’s current spat with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is of no interest to anybody but themselves; they are both just trying to drum up publicity for their respective parties at a time when there is very little sympathy for any politicians.
Remember: the Tories created all the social and economic problems that Keir Starmer’s Labour is trying to fix. Nigel Farage is the person most responsible for influencing the vote for Brexit, on which the Tories took the UK out of the EU, causing us serious economic harm. And Labour, in its cack-handed efforts for “change”, has attacked children, pensioners, the sick and the disabled – while leaving the very rich alone and pledging billions of pounds of support for foreign wars including Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.
None of the main UK political parties are worth your support.
The fact that they have representatives in our Parliament is a reflection of our own laziness in failing to find and support people who would enact real change for the better.
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Party membership does not equal public popularity – Farage is talking nonsense
Reform UK has allegedly passed the Tories in the number of members it has but Nigel Farage is talking nonsense – party membership does not equal public popularity.
His claim that Reform is now the main opposition party in Parliament is ridiculous because Reform still has only five MPs while the Tories have 121 – and it is the number of MPs that counts.
Party membership is inconsequential because it is the number of voters who support a party that matters in a general election – and even then, it is the concentration of those voters in particular constituencies that counts more because of the UK’s archaic and unfair First Past The Post system.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
So Reform UK needed 4,117,610 votes to get five seats – that’s 823,522 votes per seat. In membership terms, the party had around 50,000 members on July 4 when the election took place, so that’s 10,000 per seat.
In contrast, Labour won 411 seats from 9,708,716 votes – only 23,622 votes per seat. The party had fewer than 400,000 members at the time, so that’s roughly 1,000 members per seat.
And the Tories won 121 seats with 6,828,925 votes – 56,437 votes for every seat won. With 131,680 declared members, that’s 1,088 members per seat.
You see the problem Farage faces?
It’s not about having a larger number of party members; it’s about having a larger amount of support in the country – and a wider amount of it, so that Reform UK can take more seats. Party membership does not mean public popularity.
His nonsense claim that having a larger party membership makes his party bigger than the Conservatives comes across as propaganda; he wants people to think it’s true because then more people will vote for Reform (for example, in forthcoming local elections).
I’m thinking particularly of the “tactical vote” loonies who give up their principles for the sake of beating the party they don’t like, only to find that they’ve supported it into power by splitting the vote for the party they really want.
Farage’s current spat with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is of no interest to anybody but themselves; they are both just trying to drum up publicity for their respective parties at a time when there is very little sympathy for any politicians.
Remember: the Tories created all the social and economic problems that Keir Starmer’s Labour is trying to fix. Nigel Farage is the person most responsible for influencing the vote for Brexit, on which the Tories took the UK out of the EU, causing us serious economic harm. And Labour, in its cack-handed efforts for “change”, has attacked children, pensioners, the sick and the disabled – while leaving the very rich alone and pledging billions of pounds of support for foreign wars including Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.
None of the main UK political parties are worth your support.
The fact that they have representatives in our Parliament is a reflection of our own laziness in failing to find and support people who would enact real change for the better.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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