Reform’s law and order hypocrisy

By Gregory Davis and Harry Shukman

“Reform UK will restore Law and Order on Britain’s streets,” promises the party’s manifesto. Nigel Farage has made crime a key campaigning issue this summer, claiming that the country has become lawless under a Labour government. With Reform in power, their website says, there will be a “clampdown on all crime and antisocial behaviour”.

But is the party as tough on crime as it claims to be? A HOPE not hate analysis of senior Reform figures suggests it has a more hypocritical approach to lawbreaking — cuffs for opponents, leniency for friends.

Nowhere has this been more obvious in how the party has treated those protesting, and indeed rioting, at anti-migrant demonstrations. Last July, after the riot in Leeds, Reform’s Lee Anderson MP criticised “disgraceful scenes”. The rioters were incorrectly perceived to be entirely Muslim. On X, he wrote: “Import a third world culture then you get third world behaviour. These animals need locking up for good… I want my country back.”

Compare this to Anderson’s comments after the Southport riots, in which he dismissed the violence. “We all do daft things when we’re young,” he said. “These are not far-right thugs, they’re just young idiots who got carried away.” He added that many of those arrested “probably had one too many”. Instead of locking up the criminals, Anderson suggested, the prime minister should “sit down with them, find out what the problem is and try to come up with some solutions rather than just banging them away”.

No such mercy should be afforded, however, to environmental protestors. “Lock these nuisances up,” Anderson said in 2022. His colleagues are no different. “Arrest them, lock them up & throw away the key,” said Richard Tice that same year. He welcomed the jailing of Just Stop Oil demonstrators as “excellent news”, and has said he wanted them to receive “long sentences”, calling their actions “selfish antics”.

Reform’s leaders frequently adopt contrary positions to protesting. Farage himself has attended the farmers’ inheritance tax demonstrations, in which hundreds of tractors drove into central London and blocked traffic. “These kinds of protests need to be in every market town in England,” Farage told GB News. Asked about the impact of tractors blocking busy roads, he said: “The level of disruption in people’s lives is minimal.”

But when it came to the 2018 Extinction Rebellion protests that also blocked traffic, Farage said the group was committing “economic terrorism”. On his LBC programme, he quoted highways legislation that makes it illegal to block roads. “Zero arrests! I can’t quite believe it,” he said. In 2021, he similarly called for Extinction Rebellion to be treated like a terrorist organisation. “Arrest these people, put them in prison,” he said.

Reform’s attitude to vandalism has been equally garbled. When Palestine Action broke into RAF Brize Norton and spray-painted planes, Farage voted for the group to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. However, when it came to vigilantes destroying ULEZ cameras that enforce London’s clean air zone, he adopted a much more sympathetic view.

“When laws become enemies of men, men become enemies of law,” party leader Farage said in 2023. “I have been firmly told that in our area no ULEZ camera will stay up for long.” The following year he said vandals only went “a step too far” when they started to cut down entire traffic lights, rather than the ULEZ devices that sit on top of them.

Richard Tice, now Reform’s deputy leader, has similarly said “people are steaming furious” with the introduction of the ULEZ cameras. While he didn’t condone their actions, he nevertheless justified them, explaining: “What we are seeing is the frustration of ordinary people who see this as a tax on the poor without any justification.”

Reform’s approach to law and order is not just hypocritical, it is dangerous. Their manifesto includes this pledge: “Withdraw citizenship from immigrants who commit crime with the exception of some misdemeanour offences.” This is incredibly worrying: it creates a two-tier justice system whereby British citizenship is conditional on good behaviour for anyone whose parents or ancestors arrived from overseas. It sends a message that some Brits are and forever will be foreigners in their own country.

“Reform UK will be the toughest party on law and order this country has ever seen,” Farage said at a press conference last week. If his own record is anything to go by, Reform will only crack down on their opponents. But they will be happy to bend the law for their friends.