LONDON: Nigel Farage, the new leader of Britain's right-wing Reform Party and a thorn in the side of the ruling Conservatives, was sprayed with a soft drink on Tuesday during his first full day of campaigning for a parliamentary seat in the election. July 4th. choice.
On Monday, Farage produced the biggest shock of the campaign so far by announcing he would lead Reform and stand in the election, a blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose Conservative Party is trailing Labor in the polls.
Farage is best known for helping to lead a successful campaign in 2016 for Britain to leave the European Union, and his popularity has pressured a succession of Conservative prime ministers to take tougher stances on immigration.
Shortly after launching his election campaign at the headquarters of Clacton-on-Sea, in the southeast of England, Farage was approached by a woman who threw a large cup of soft drink at him as he left a pub, according to images published on the networks. social.
He appeared unharmed as security took him away.
Some media reports suggested two people were arrested after Farage had what appears to be a milkshake thrown on him in Clacton during the first day of election campaigning in Essex Town.
Richard Tice, president of Reform, called the attacker a “youthful imbecile” and said his party would not allow itself to be thrown out of the election campaign and that the incident would help it win hundreds of thousands more votes.
Local police said they had arrested a 25-year-old woman on suspicion of assault.
Home Secretary James Cleverly condemned the incident as unacceptable.
Farage, a former commodities trader often pictured with a cigarette and pint of beer in hand, has been the figurehead of Euroscepticism in Britain for three decades and is no stranger to controversy.
Charismatic and divisive, he has made comments in the past that his political opponents have called racist. During the Brexit campaign, Farage appeared in front of a poster showing lines of immigrants under the slogan “Breaking Point”; Last month he said Muslims did not share British values.
He was previously doused with a milkshake in 2019 while campaigning for the Brexit Party, the predecessor to Reform, in Newcastle ahead of the European Parliament election.
On that occasion, his attacker was sentenced to pay for the cleaning of his suit after pleading guilty to common assault and criminal damage.
