Wednesday, September 09, 2026
Should the Reform UK leadership take responsibility for violence at their conference?
The Times reports that climate protesters who were attacked while disrupting Nigel Farage’s speech at the Reform UK conference have called on Robert Jenrick to apologise for “trivialising” the violence.
The paper says that the protesters, who interrupted the party leader’s address on Friday to ask him about the £5 million gift he received from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, suffered bruises after audience members pulled them to the floor and kicked them:
One audience member hit a protester over the head with his crutch and another pulled out her hair in clumps.
When asked about the attacks on Sky News, Jenrick, Reform’s economic spokesman, said: “Oh boohoo […] get a life. You take your chances if you go to a party conference and try to mess it up.
“We’re now in a country where somebody, whatever she is, a far-left protester, goes into a party conference, tries to wreck the leader’s speech and cries foul if a pensioner knocks her over the head with a Zimmer frame. Come on, get a life.”
When asked on LBC whether the attacks were “heavy-handed”, he said: “What would you expect [the audience] to do? Let me think how sympathetic I am towards that person: not at all.”
The protesters, from the campaign group Climate Resistance, said Jenrick’s comments were in danger of encouraging political violence. “When politicians make light of any kind of violence and trivialise it, the risk is they make people feel that kind of thing is acceptable,” said Ophelia, a protester who was beaten on the back by the man with the crutch and did not wish to give her full name.
“People were kicking us, punching us. I got off quite lucky in comparison to one of the other protesters. Clumps of her hair were falling out in her hands as we were walking away. You can imagine how violently they were pulling it.
“I knew the atmosphere in the room was hostile but I still wasn’t prepared for how aggressive the other people in the crowd would be. We were completely ordinary people exercising our right to challenge a powerful politician.
“We sat there all day listening to speeches about how Reform protect women, how they promote British values, but it doesn’t really seem they are willing to apply those values when it’s inconvenient to them.”
Once you start justifying violence against one group of people, it is a slippery slope to defending violence against others. Is this really where Reform UK want to go? Is that a responsible attitude from a once-senior politician? I don't think so.
