Zia Yusuf takes swipe at Badenoch, Reeves and Starmer in fiery Reform speech

Reform Party Chairman Zia Yusuf took a sly swipe at Kemi Badenoch amid an ongoing Reform membership row between the populist party and the Tories. Speaking to crowds at a regional conference in the East Midlands, Yusuf addressed the ongoing spat between Farage and Badenoch which broke out on Boxing Day, when Reform’s membership numbers surpassed those of the Tories.The party chairman blasted Badenoch, who had claimed that she knew the ticker was “fake” because she could monitor the backend of the website, saying that “the only backend that Kemi had been monitoring is the one that she was talking out of”.Yusuf said: “The Leader of the Opposition, inexplicably, made the unwise decision to accuse us of faking our membership numbers.”She keeps calling herself an engineer. Perhaps she is – in the same way Rachel Reeves is an economist, and Keir Starmer is the son of a toolmaker.”Calming down the crowds, he continued that they ought to be “grateful” to the Tory leader, because in the 24 hours after her “ill-advised outburst”, more members had signed up to the party than ever in its history.Yusuf cited journalists’ verification of his party’s membership ticker, who all confirmed that Reform UK had surpassed the Tories in terms of signed-up members.The Financial Times said: “The demonstration provided strong evidence that the online counter did correspond to the number of members that had signed up to Reform.”LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Zia Yusuf takes sly swipe at Kemi Badenoch over Reform membership rowStarmer issued ‘wake-up call’ as ‘extraordinary’ new poll shows PM haemorrhaging seats to ReformLee Anderson rips up BBC license fee reminder on stageSky News’ Ben van der Merwe added: “In fact, it all looks perfectly normal. Membership applications decline overnight, then rise in the morning.”Currently, Reform has more than 167,000 members, beating the Conservatives’ 131,680 card-carrying members, according to the same ticker on January 3.Following their clash on Twitter on December 26, a Tory source told GB News: “Fake Farage is clearly rattled that his Boxing Day Publicity Stunt is facing serious questions over a fake clock and hundreds of ‘members’ seemingly joining in the middle of the night.”Like most normal people around the UK, Kemi is enjoying Christmas with her family and looking forward to taking on the challenges of renewing the Conservative Party in the New Year.”Zia Yusuf was accompanied by a number of Reform UK bigwigs at the regional conference this evening, including MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson and deputy leader Richard Tice. The event follows the latest polling from Stonehaven that estimates that Reform UK could win more than 100 seats at the next General Election, making massive gains across the nation.According to the data, Labour would win 278 seats, the Conservatives 157, Reform UK 120, the Lib Dems 47 and the SNP 24 under Stonehaven’s data, as revealed by The i.It has also predicted that top Cabinet ministers, including former Labour leader Ed Miliband and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, would lose their seats in a devastating loss.

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