Last week a Labour insider gave The Pygge a tip-off. They said that there were fears inside the party that it may have less members than Reform UK.
Labour’s membership numbers are in freefall, with well-placed sources telling The Pygge they may have already fallen below Reform’s – or be rapidly approaching its total. During the Corbyn era, Labour’s membership swelled to more than 500,000, making the party one of the largest in Europe, and by far the largest in Britain. Keir Starmer’s leadership, however, has seen a reversal, with the party losing almost 200,000 members in the past five years.
The latest official figures (published in August) record the party’s membership at 333,235 as of the end of 2024. A further report, from party bible LabourList, put the figure at 309,000 as of February of this year. This is the closest thing we now have to an official figure. Since then, the party has gone dark on the numbers, telling an NEC meeting in May that it would no longer update the committee due to members leaking to the press. In a report from the meeting, left-wing NEC members branded the leak line “bizarre”, as they had not been asked to treat the figures as confidential previously, and it was “common practice” for the committee to release them afterwards.
Why then the sudden change in tack? In a word, dear reader, Reform. The insurgent party’s membership has been steadily rising; a live tracker on the party’s website lists its membership at more than 260,000. Above the ticker is a single line: “At 309,000 we will overtake Labour’s membership and become the largest political party in the UK.”
Of course, that assumes Labour’s membership number hasn’t dropped any further over the past eight months, a period which includes the welfare and winter fuel fiascos, disastrous local election results, the resignation of Angela Rayner, the sacking of Peter Mandelson, and plummeting approval and polling ratings. Efforts by The Pygge to lock down an up-to-date official figure have proved in vain. The party pushed back against suggestions its membership figures were already lower than Reform’s, but declined to provide The Pygge with a ballpark figure.
The membership figure is now one of Labour’s most closely guarded secrets. The Pygge wonders how long that will last. On Saturday, Labour will announce the winner of its deputy leadership election. It’s not expected to give a turnout percentage, but it will tell us something interesting about the state of the party’s membership.
[Further reading: Exclusive: Starmer outspends Johnson on levelling up in first year]
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