Nigel Farage has revealed that Reform UK’s membership has soared past 200,000 – as he set his sights on overtaking the size of the Labour Party.

The Reform UK leader and Clacton MP called his party’s growth “truly extraordinary” at a Reform UK regional conference event in Wiltshire.

He pointed to a screen displaying the party’s live membership ticker on its website and said the message would change when he came off stage.

“That message will say, as I leave this stage, it’ll change, and it will say that the Labour Party have 309,000 members, and when we overtake them, we will be the biggest political party in this country.

“That’s our goal. That’s our aim. That’s our target,” he said.

Reform’s membership numbers surpassed those of the Conservatives last December, sparking a public spat between the populist and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch on Boxing Day.

The North West Essex MP previously accused Mr Farage of “fakery” over his booming membership numbers after Reform launched an online membership ticker – which she insisted was “coded up to tick automatically”.

Soon after, Mr Farage responded to the Tory leader online, assuring her that the “membership numbers are correct and have now been verified by the media”.

The party later received verification from various media outlets including Sky News, The Telegraph and the Financial Times – all of whom confirmed that the Reform’s membership ticker was displaying accurate information.

He said: “Kemi Badenoch says she wants to rebuild trust in politics. She should start by apologising to me.”

More recently, Reform has targeted Labour’s move to cancel local elections across nine English authorities in May later this year.