Farage taunts Badenoch in her own backyard as he threatens to unseat her

Nigel Farage has announced a plan to target Kemi Badenoch’s seat at the next election after the Tory leader claimed that Reform UK was lying about its membership numbers.

Speaking in Ms Badenoch’s North West Essex constituency this afternoon, Mr Farage called the Conservative Party leader a “ranting raving conspiracy theorist”.

He then responded to calls from the audience to sue her by hinting that he would not do this.

The Reform UK leader said: “To sue somebody, you have to prove actual harm.”

But he suggested that Ms Badenoch’s comments had actually helped his party recruit “thousands” of new members.

Mr Farage told supporters: “No apology has been forthcoming. So I’ve been deciding what should I do about this?”

A member of the audience shouted: “Take her seat!”

Another shouted: “Sue her!”

The Reform UK leader replied: “To sue somebody, you have to prove actual harm. What she’s done is given us a massive favour and thousands of new members.”

After applause, he added: “So, I’ve gone for a different approach and on the 31st of this month, I’ll be holding a meeting for the north west Essex members of Reform, and there’s now 400 of them in this constituency.

“They can come along, meet me and all get a free photograph, and I’ll do a big group picture, which I’ll send to the current MP for this seat, to show her who the fake members are.

And Kemi, because because you’ve been so rude, so unpleasant, the accusations you made against me are so wrong, I promise you, we as a party now will put time, money, resource. This will become a target seat for us at the next general election.”

In a thread on X posted in December, Ms Badenoch said a live ticker on Reform UK’s website, which the party says keeps track of the number of its members, was a “fake”, and used a clock emoji to say that it had been “coded to tick up automatically”.

“Farage doesn’t understand the digital age,” Badenoch added. “This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”

In July 2024, Ms Badenoch garnered 35.6% of the vote. The Reform UK candidate, Grant StClair-Armstrong, attained 14.1%.

This means that, in order to take the seat, Mr Farage’s party would have to close a 21.5% gap at the next general election.

The vote is due in 2029.