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Nigel Farage threatens legal action if Kemi Badenoch doesn't apologise for saying membership ticker was 'fake' (news.sky.com)

submitted 6 days ago by Emperor@feddit.uk to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

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Nigel Farage has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a "fake" ticker showing Reform UK's membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.

The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch's assertion that he was "manipulating [his] own supporters" with a ticker that is "coded to tick up automatically" after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members - the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn.

He is demanding an apology from Ms Badenoch for the "accusations of fraud and dishonesty" that he labelled "disgraceful", and said he is "not going to take it lying down".

Asked by Sky News in a call with journalists if he is going to sue the Tory leader for libel, Mr Farage said: "I'm going to take some action in the next couple of days. I've got to decide exactly what it is, but I'm certainly not going to take it lying down."

...

Reform showed Sky News the coding used to link the ticker to the member count within their account on the platform NationBuilder. The demonstration provided strong evidence that the ticker was not automated.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Badenoch is an idiot (shocking I know) because programming it to tick up automatically is the most naive way or faking numbers. It's very easily disproved.

What's much more likely is that they are real numbers but they're from bot accounts. We only have reforms word that everyone was charged £25, showing Sky News the API calls doesn't really prove anything.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 8 points 5 days ago

What’s much more likely is that they are real numbers but they’re from bot accounts.

Or they are cover for foreign bad faith actors to pump cash into Reform to influence UK politics. I'd be interested to see if they do due diligence on sign-up or if the "members" are just created by bots scraping public information (or just making shit up).