Nigel Farage has dropped a major signal that he’s plotting a major push to become Britain’s next Prime Minister by announcing he will hand over control of Reform UK party to members.

In a video on X, the Brexit architect declared: “I’ve now made a decision. I no longer need to control this party. I’m going to let go.”

Reform chairman Zia Yusuf has since confirmed the move, which would see Mr Farage giving up his 40 percent stake in the venture, so that it can become a incorporated as a fully-fledged political party, The Sun reports.

It would also mean members of Reform UK, which unlike most parties is registered as a company, could seek to remove him as leader, indicating his confidence in his support, and the party’s ambitions to take the fight to Labour and the Conservatives.

But Mr Yusuf told The Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots politics show that it would come after Mr Farage’s bid to become PM by 2030.

Mr Yusuf said part of the decision is also to ensure that the party has “succession plans”. When asked about his own political ambitions, the multi-millionaire businessman said: “My plans are to build the most formidable campaign-winning machine in this country and ensure Nigel Farage is elected Prime Minister.

“And I really believe that Nigel Farage could be elected Prime Minister,” he added.

He told BBC News the party’s membership had surged to over than 80,000, as it looks to build campaigning machinery and becoming the official opposition ahead of the next national ballot.

Reform shocked the Westminster establishment by capturing 14 percent of the votes in July’s general election and putting five MPs into Parliament.

Mr Farage said that when he set up Reform UK Limited, his financial ownership “led to much hilarity in the press”, but was necessary for him to “make very fast decisions”.

“Secondly, and most importantly, the real reason was to prevent a small, nascent political party being taken over by malign actors, and that was my really big fear, but we’ve moved on,” the MP for Clacton-on-Sea added.

Former deputy leader of the party Ben Habib claimed in a video X that he had been advocating for the democratisation of the party behind the scenes “for many years”, as he criticised the planned leadership rules.

He insisted he wasn’t “having a go” at Mr Farage, but added 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”.

Mr Habib also said the new constitution the party is putting together wouldn’t allow the party members to remove Mr Farage as leader, as has been suggested, only to call a vote of no confidence the company’s board would have the final say.

“This is not democracy. This is not the ability of the membership to remove the leader,” he said. “This is the technical ability of the membership to ask the board to please consider removing the leader.”

“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,” he added.

“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.”