The General Secretary of the Labour Party has announced that the Labour Party will no longer publish it’s membership numbers. This is because Labour Party membership had dropped rapidly in February 2025 to 309,000. At that time the Labour Party was losing one member every 10 minutes. At the same date, Reform UK was gaining 2,000 or more members every week.
It is accepted that Reform UK membership numbers are no longer growing at the same rate, although their position in the polls continues to rise.
Staggeringly, even under Jeremy Corbyn, membership was 600,000 for Labour and when Starmer took over it was 550,000 – so by February 2025, that was a 43% drop in membership…. but even that’s not as bad as the Conservatives!
The Electoral Commission does not require political parties to publish membership numbers, although many parties voluntarily include this data in their annual accounts. While all registered political parties are legally obligated to submit annual financial statements to the Electoral Commission, there’s no specific requirement to include membership figures within those accounts. Therefore, membership data, when available, is often derived from these voluntarily submitted accounts.
There is also no uniformly recognised definition of membership, nor is there an established method or body to monitor it. Nonetheless, the majority of main parties voluntarily include membership figures in annual accounts for the year ending 31 December, submitted to the Electoral Commission.
[Source: Membership of political parties in Great Britain; House of Commons Library]
Currently Reform have about 235,000 members and these are growing at about 5,000 members per month….so how long will Labour Party be the bigger party…. on this basis not long!