Unlock Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party says its membership has surpassed the Conservatives for the first time, in a sign of growing momentum for the populist upstart with just five MPs in parliament.

reformation had more than 132,000 members on Thursday morning, according to the party’s live online tally, surpassing the 131,860 Tory members when Kemi Badenoch was elected opposition leader last month.

Farage is looking to capitalize on the general election defeat the Tories suffered at the hands of Labor in July, and said at a press conference this month that the Tories had “broken the brand”.

“This is a huge, historic moment,” Farage said on Thursday. “The youngest political party in British politics has just defeated the oldest political party in the world. UK Reform is now the real opposition.

The reform won five MPs in the election and received a further boost earlier in December when Farage met Elon Musk in the US. Farage says the tech billionaire is thinking of donating to Reform.

Farage is seeking to strengthen Reform’s ground campaign by expanding its membership in swaths of the UK where it already has support, including Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Wales.

The party has been vocal about its plans to follow the electoral tactics used by the Liberal Democrats, often targeting a smaller number of seats in local and national elections, honoring their platforms of message and policy to voters in the regions.

Reform is trying to find thousands of supporters willing to canvass and collect data for the party, as well as stand as councilors in next year’s local elections.

The party hopes to win hundreds of council seats in local elections in May, as well as at least one mayoralty.