Does an image comparison posted on social media prove that Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party, exaggerated the size of the crowd at one of his events? No, that's not true: The image on the left accurately displayed the audience at a political rally. The other picture, showing Farage in front of a smaller crowd, was taken at a different event, making the comparison illogical.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on June 24, 2024. The post included a graphic with two images of Farage: one on the left with him in front of a large crowd and another on the right with him speaking to a much smaller audience. The caption of the post read:
On the left, what Nigel Farage saw.
On the right, what the camera saw.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jun 25 14:59:27 2024 UTC)
The image on the left was taken at a rally (archived here) hosted by the Reform UK party in Devon, a county in England, on June 24, 2024.
Farage posted the image on his X (archived here) and Facebook (archived here) pages. Although Lead Stories could not find the origin of the image, we did find several images from Getty Images that validate the size of the crowd as shown in the image included in the post (archived here). The Getty Images series also included images with Farage's hand raised in a similar way as in the image included in the post: those can be found here (archived here) and here (archived here).
The image on the right was taken earlier the same day, but at a different event (archived here) held in Kent, another English county. Lead Stories located the original image (archived here), taken by a photographer with PA Media. Other images from PA Media showing the event do show that attendance was much smaller (archived here).
Thus, comparing the two images as if they were taken at the same place and time is misleading.
Lead Stories reached out to Farage for comment on the claim and for information about where the image of him in front of the large crowd came from. We will update this story with any relevant response.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to Farage can be found here.
