Membership for the populist Reform UK party has surpassed that of the Conservatives, according to the party led by Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage’s party, Reform UK, claimed this morning that it had surpassed 131,680 members. According to “Britain’s fastest growing political party”, that means it has more members than the Conservatives.

According to Reform UK’s live membership tracker, there were almost 153,000 members at the time of writing. According to the Guardian, approximately 2.8 million people were registered with the Conservative Party and one million to the Labour Party in the 1950s.

A former Conservative MP has defected to Reform UK. During the Reform UK East Midlands Conference in Leicester, party leader Nigel Farage introduced Marco Longhi to the stage as "a loyal member of the Conservative Party for the last goodness knows how many years".

The latest defection to Reform Marco Longhi has suggested that if Elon Musk's potential donation to the populist party becomes a contentious issue, broader questions must be raised about political funding in Britain.