Reform UK’s Nigel Farage has hit out at Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the party’s youngest council leader was attacked in the street on Friday. George Finch suffered an allegedly unprovoked attack in Nuneaton town centre at the weekend, after which his assailant started shouting abuse at the 19-year-old Warwickshire county council leader – calling him a ‘fascist’ and a ‘racist’. Now Farage has blasted the PM for his ‘disgraceful’ rhetoric about Reform in recent weeks, while Labour has said it is ‘categorically incorrect’ to suggest Sir Keir was responsible.
Farage fumed to the Daily Mail:
I’m deeply upset that our young council leader was assaulted. The words used against him echo the Prime Minister’s disgraceful attack on Reform during Labour conference week and wholly irresponsible comments from the leader of the Green Party.
It comes after Starmer branded Reform’s immigration policies – including the party’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain – as ‘racist’. Meanwhile Green leader Zack Polanski has come under attack from the group after he went after Reform’s Zia Yusuf on BBC Question Time over ex-Welsh Reform leader Nathan Gill, who has plead guilty to taking Russian bribes to make statements in favour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia while he was a member of the European parliament. Farage has since insisted Gill was one ‘bad apple’ who betrayed him.
During Labour’s Liverpool conference, both Farage and Yusuf slammed Starmer’s word choice and suggested it could incite violence, claiming that the Reform leader has had his police security slashed by 75 per cent. And while the Reform men aren’t strangers to using antagonist lines of attack, this latest incident will no doubt have politicians of all stripes thinking a little more about their safety…
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