Nigel Farage claims Reform U.K. membership has surpassed that of the Tories’ and he’s got a website to prove it:
Kemi Badenoch claims it’s a fake. She says the website is just showing an ever-increasing number, nothing to do with actual membership. Who is right? And on what basis do they make their claims?
The Reform U.K. membership counter is on the internet where we can all see it, so let’s do a bit of sceptical enquiry. If we point our web browser at it, we see an occasionally updating counter. Open up the browser developer tools and we can see network traffic when the counter updates. Where is that traffic coming from?
Our browser is making a connection to a computer whose internet address is 3.11.10.26 or in more human friendly terms, pro-worker.reformparty.uk. If you try this, the IP address may be different, but it is always associated with the Reform UK domain name. That’s because the software developer has used Amazon’s elastic beanstalk service to cope with the expected traffic, so it is spread across multiple machines. Anyway, those machines are almost certainly controlled by Reform which means it is almost certainly running their software. By the way, those IP addresses are of U.K. based Amazon Web Services machines:
That indicates a U.K.-based deployer of the software, although that doesn’t prove much. The software could be a simple increasing counter or a real-time Stripe analytics package. But either one would have to be deployed by Reform.
So, the real question is what does the software do? It certainly gives back some data that says the “current total” is a particular number:
But where does that number come from? Software can do all sorts of things. Is it a random number generator? Or a count of the payments made to Reform’s Stripe account? Or a fully audited analysis of the Reform membership? From what is available on the public internet we cannot say.
Here at the Daily Sceptic we would be very interested to hear from the developer of the software as to what it actually does. One way to resolve this would be for Reform to open source that software. It is very likely in a repository on GitHub – just make it public (remove the secrets first guys, obvs). And proof of deployment would be good too. That would give us a very clear winner.
Stop Press: Reform U.K. has threatened legal action against Kemi Badenoch after she accused the party of faking its membership numbers, according to the Telegraph.
Stop Press 2: Reform U.K. hasn’t open sourced its software, but Nigel Farage claims the party has “opened” its “systems” to various newspapers and broadcasters “in the interests of full transparency”.
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This is too sensible… unless proving the link to real membership numbers would expose the Kemi Badenoch claims as untrue, just politics.
I suspect they have been kind of cheating. At a guess I expect they have been taking batch imports of members or at least batched member totals and then have the membership ticker regularly count-up to the batched figure. If they have been really naughty they have been guessing a future figure and then adjusting the count rate to the next figure to reconcile inaccuracy.
That way the count increase occurs at a regular interval which is what the ticker has been showing. The problem is it is too regular (which is why I think what I have described is most likely). This is a similar technique as is used by “limited seats” counters on ticket sales websites.
I suspect you are speculating based on no data.
I’m speculating based on the clear regular update to the count and having run web services with sign-up for large digital to services I know it tends to happen more in fits and starts than the Reform count is showing, but most significantly it will vary massively depending on time of the day. The Reform counter has been showing uniform progress throughout the day – which has led me to think it is using the kind of “sales counter” code I mentioned. I hope not because it will end up being a distraction. But the truth is the truth. If they have used such code it is bad judgement. I support Reform (with big reservation because they are in a rather cowardly fashion putting the boot in to Tommy Robinson), I’m just not, unlike some on here, a fan-boy.
Processing in batches is not deception.
when Reform accounts are submitted to the Electoral Commission the membership number will be stated together with membership income (perhaps – don’t think mandatory).
What about scrutinising Conservative membership figures?
The gap toothed Nigerian and her Rona-fascist-Net zero-open borders-party…..and I am supposed to believe her and these convicts? Pass on that.
Just a reminder of who the Nigerian supports
Course she does – she wouldn’t be in the position she is if she didn’t…
Reform would have to be monumentally stupid to cheat, especially when they have zero need to and any 12 year old geek could catch them…wheras the tory party have every reason to debunk Reforms claims .
If it increments but doesn’t decrement is that cheating?
Do I care? Either way Reform is on an up escalator while the Tories are on the down escalator. The only question is the relative steepness of them.
There is a very clear winner here. Nigel has cast a fly and waited for Kemi to rise to it. There is no good side to Kemi’s assertion. She has to prove her own membership number to have credibility in doubting Reforms, she has made herself look petty and on the defensive and given considerable free PR to Reform also. Are the numbers quite accurate.? Who cares. Its about winners and losers and Farage has won this round comfortably.
That’s a great point.
Like with Trump’s hyperbolic claims and exaggerations, what he really achieves is that everyone starts talking about whatever issues he’s talked up and it becomes a thing. Even if he’s not 100% right, he’s sort of right, or right enough that his overall point is made and inserted into everyone’s consciousness.
Not saying that Reform are exaggerating but more people are aware today that Reform is either catching up or has caught up to the Tories than yesterday. As you say, the numbers are the least of it, that’s the real win right there.
Back in time, when I ran a business which was competing with much more established players. I decided to start our ‘Quotation Numbers’ off, not at 1, but 573. Its juggling a bit with perception, but it isn’t lying.Same when we had two vans and I had an obvious ‘van number’ put on them. One was ’07’ and the other was ’12’. We didn’t have 12 vans but what the hell. Just perception. Thats what Nigel is doing. He could have started membership numbers at 1 or at 54,392. Whatever, Kemi has taken the fly, and although putting up a struggle, she’ll be in the keepnet very soon.
But we know how the numbers have increased all year.
Sadly your theory doesn’t stack up to reality. I joined in August and my membership number is well over 1200000, so they are not allocating them numerically, but presumably, as we used to do with bank accounts when I was responsible for opening new ones back in the 1980s, using the number to indicate something more than just the next person to join. Many sales organisations use numbers to subset customers by region, age, sex or anything that makes it easier to market to interest and maybe they are using membership number for the same purpose.
I still don’t understand the suspicion here. There is no benefit to Reform to falsely inflate numbers so quickly. The growth has been steady since I started watching the ticker a while ago. The expectation was that the number would exceed the Tories in a few months, which would still achieve the result wanted but it happened in days, over Christmas when a lot of focus is elsewhere, so the question remains, if the number is not credible, why would they fake it. They don’t need to, but the engineer has done a great job of making it news and embarrassing herself.
I’m member 414xx – joined February last year.
Yes …. she demonstrated how rattled the Treacherous Tories are.
Petition DOT parliament DOT uk/petitions/700824
Close the borders! Suspend ALL immigration for 5 years!
Let’s get on board.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700824
The Tory Party’s real problem is that it’s dead in the water, and has set itself the task of voluntarily getting into the dustbin of history. It has no realistic policies relating to the central crisis of our time: the Great Replacement. Instead, it adopted a deranged version of the mad mass unlimited unvetted immigration so beloved of the haters of our people and our country. Good riddance to the Tory Party.
I don’t understand why anyone is questioning this, just because the engineer doesn’t believe it and unless there is a demand for all parties to be independently audited, why should Reform have to? It all seems very simple to me, I joined Reform, paid my money and a line was created on the list of members, increasing the number by one. A fairly basic process, surely, but of course it probably won’t show people who have left the organisation.
Now, this is the big one, because it is inconceivable that someone would leave Reform within the first year of joining, as they have really yet to do anything to upset their membership, although Richard Tice probably came close by branding all of the Summer protesters as those people, as though they were a amorphous mass of extremists, which they certainly weren’t, many being ordinary, fed up British people, and probably some Reform voters. However, turning to the Tory numbers, these are almost certainly wrong. Many, possibly tens of thousands, will have quit the party in the last twelve months, probably without bothering to tell them, but even those who had mentally left earlier in the year, possibly paying for their membership of Reform, may still have voted in the Tory leadership contest, just to queer the result. So, we can be fairly sure the Reform number is right but the Tory number is wrong, despite what the engineer (and she isn’t really one you know), might want to believe.
They’re using NationBuilder, which is used by a number of political organisations and which I had a look at when setting up the FSU’s systems. I think the Conservatives also use NationBuilder, but don’t quote me on that. The owners of NationBuilder won’t be open-sourcing it — it’s very much proprietary — but the chances of them somehow “faking” membership numbers for the benefit of Reform, when they have a lot of other political customers to worry about, is next to zero.
Thanks for that Ian.
Thanks, Ian.
Kemi just trying to drag Reform back into the infantile non politics beloved by WEF puppets. If I was the developer I’d check the trend over the past few months, make a linear regression to slightly undershoot the projected numbers, and randomly update the ticker. So if there ever was a dispute, we’d already be past the reported number. The website is just an illustration, and since the membership is clearly going up, it’s only a matter of time before any specific number is passed. Tories are going down. Nigel would obviously have checked the real membership numbers before making the announcement.
He will then explain WHY. Where we get to adult policies about immigration, energy policy, and food and drug regulation. Three broad areas where our political classes are failing, and have failed catastrophically.
Of course she mentioned it which means people talk about.
Maybe she should be trying to talk about something more important.
She’s giving Reform free publicity – dumb.
Let her fire away. The sooner the wretched fake Tory Party is buried the better.
Off-T.
All we wood burning stovers are destroying the planet… scented candles cause cancer… digital ID for muppets and more, but all utterly barmy.
https://off-guardian.org/2024/12/25/this-christmas-in-the-new-normal-3/
I can only comment based on my personal experience.
I bought my wife membership for Christmas (a step up from the usual festive mop!).
This morning I bought my membership in direct response to Badenoch’s petulent comment.
“Festive mop”!
The huz got me a lovely necklace this year, which was a step up from the Soda Stream I got last year ( allegedly to be environmentally friendly and save buying plastic bottles ), and to make matters worse i took receipt of it from the delivery guy so I knew exactly what it was.
I got him some fancy star-gazing binoculars, the super powerful ones so that you can look at the moon and parts of the solar system. Despite declaring they’re the best present he ever had he’s used them once. I went back to 
this year.
You were an estimable wife last year; I am sure you have worked out that with us blokes it is the ownership thereof not the use of high spec items that confers bragging rights.
My wife bought me a super powerful laser cutter/engraver (cuts half inch hardwood!) this year although she didn’t know she had done it. Wionderful woman.
Kemi, mate, this is not going to help you. It smells of desperation.
It quacks like it too.
It seems that Reform have explained how the number is determined, via NationBuilder and that is based on membership payments data.
Looks like Kemi will need to apologise.
Why should we believe a sceptical leader of the Conservative Party. If DS can’t prove where the number comes from how does she claim to have done so. Has she or an IT specialist hacked Regofm
Why would she not expect there membership to rise.
Why would we not expect her membership to have wilted this year. If she says it is bigger than the last known number why did she not provide that.
It was very foolish of Badenoch to cry “fraud” without having absolute proof that fraud was being carried out.
She’s outed herself as a “shoot from the hip” reactionary who is terrified of Farage and Reform.
The Conservative Party under Badenoch is floundering. Where are her membership winning policies….? She and her Party have done their best to destroy this country and now have the gall to expect new followers. Dream on Kemi. Vote Reform UK
Politicians manipulating numbers? Well I never!
Kemi Badenoch is not going to save the Conservative Party. They needed a radical change, instead they have double downed on mediocrity. They are still in self-destruct mode. Why not publish their own numbers daily to show their trajectory or would that be too embarrassing?
This is nothing but a playground spat. Where are the adults in the room?
Reform have no need to prove anything. Never explain, never complain.