Nigel Farage to give up majority of shares in Reform UK Ltd
Former party deputy leader Ben Habib said that he had been advocating for the democratisation of the party behind the scenes ‘for many years’.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will be giving up the majority of shares in the party, the PA news agency understands.
Reform UK Ltd is a registered company, unlike most other political parties, and was previously registered as the Brexit Party from 2018-2021.
Companies House lists party leader Mr Farage, and deputy leader Richard Tice, as persons with significant control, with Mr Farage currently owning more than 50% of shares.
After July’s general election, where they received 14% of the vote share, Reform now has five MPs in parliament.
Reform faced frequent criticism over its election campaign for racist or xenophobic comments made on social media by candidates, after which Mr Farage vowed he would “professionalise” the party in a bid to become the official opposition in 2029.
Former party deputy leader Ben Habib posted a video to X where he said that he had been advocating for the democratisation of the party behind the scenes “for many years”.
He claimed he was not “having a go” at Mr Farage, but that “if a leader is going to act with integrity it’s best he be held to account by the membership of his own party”.
He said: “There’s nothing like accountability and scrutiny and the knowledge that you will be removed as leader to drive you to behave with integrity, with purpose and fulfilling the promises that you’ve made to the people of the membership.”
Mr Habib also asserted that Reform was planning a new constitution but that this would not allow the party members to remove Mr Farage as leader, only to call a vote of no confidence – the company’s board would have the final decision.
He said: “This is not democracy. This is not the ability of the membership to remove the leader. This is the technical ability of the membership to ask the board to please consider removing the leader.”
He added: “The constitution itself is an awful document and could be picked apart in multiple different ways, but it certainly hasn’t had the finest legal minds in the country working on it day and night.
“I could have drafted it, I would have done a better job drafting it, and it doesn’t, and this is obviously the critical point – it doesn’t deliver the ability to remove the leader.”
