Friday, July 17, 2026
Reform hypocrisy on 'hurty words'
He talks about his own experience as the son of a former cabinet minister and the protection officers who dominated his formative years, with emergency buttons everywhere and discusses the response of Reform politicians in particular, who, rightly or wrongly, believe that they are all targets and that nobody cares:
Frightened people say foolish things but it’s hard not to notice how closely Reform UK’s response to Widdecombe’s death has matched its broader political messaging. “It’s as though someone in the establishment wants us dead,” said Richard Tice of the authorities’ failure, thus far, to hand out bodyguards. Obviously I haven’t phoned the establishment to check but this strikes me as grandiose. What, all of you? Not just the boss? Even if Britain functioned like Russia, I’m not sure they’d think it worth the bother. What’s more, it appears Nigel Farage was offered protection equal to Kemi Badenoch and turned it down. That doesn’t mean Tice is wrong to be worried. Of course he isn’t. If Widdecombe was at risk, he could be too. Maniacs follow no rules.
So what to do about them? Yesterday, Reform’s party chairman, Zia Yusuf, demanded round-the-clock protection for all 650 MPs. Aside from the expense, the obvious flaw here is that this wouldn’t have helped Widdecombe, who wasn’t one, any more than it would Yusuf himself, who isn’t either. It also only deals with a symptom of the real problem. Because if we really do now live in a country where every MP requires the sort of protection once needed by a small handful of cabinet ministers, then surely that’s the bit to fix.
Here, though, Reform is on tricky ground. Yesterday Yusuf also hit out at rival politicians for “equating us to murderous regimes that butchered tens of millions of people”, on the basis that it might incite violence. I agree with him. I’m not sure he agrees with himself.
Reform, remember, is also the party that put Lucy Connolly on stage, introducing her as “Britain’s favourite political prisoner” after she called for asylum hotels to be firebombed. For two years they led, with sneers, the argument that mere “hurty words” hurt nobody. Meanwhile, Farage has accused Richard Hermer, the attorney-general, of “hating our history and our country” and accused plenty more of plenty more. This very week, Yusuf himself, who seems to be growing increasingly wild, hit back at the former Tory MP Harvey Proctor — who mildly chided Farage for politicising Widdecombe’s death — by publicly denouncing him as “depraved” for a historic gay sex offence that today wouldn’t be illegal. He is also still telling his followers that the Tories “destroyed Britain” and that Andy Burnham is about to destroy it even more. And on, and on.
Either this matters, or it doesn’t. Either maniacs are inspired by incendiary language or they are not. Personally, I think the link is diffuse, but I also think it pretty damn obvious that the more violent and condemnatory our discourse, the more likely it becomes that various maniacs will find focus for their mania.
A week ago, Reform would have called me a snowflake for that. Should their own children come to find themselves living in houses full of buttons they mustn’t press, I wonder if they’ll ever admit, even if only to themselves, that they got this one wrong.
He has a point. Reform politicians have been at the forefront of using this sort of language to demonise people and to encourage people to take matters into their own hands. They say they are victims of establishment hatred, but they are perpetrators as well.
