Nigel Farage has claimed British police forces are infected by a “woke culture” that has made them biased against Right-wingers. The Reform UK leader compared the UK to Russia and Communist China as he warned police were harassing people for expressing opinions instead of fighting crime.
Incidents and comparisons
It follows a series of incidents in which police have turned up at people’s homes following complaints about social media posts. Mr Farage highlighted the Metropolitan Police’s refusal to take action against Green Party leader Zack Polanski. Mr Polanski had shared a photo of a man with a T-shirt showing a guillotine and the phrase “we’re only making plans for Nigel”. The Green leader said he had made an “inadvertent mistake” but refused to apologise.
Mr Farage said: “There were more knocks at the door in this country in 2025 than there were in Communist China or Russia.”
Two-tier policing claim
“People do say horrible things on social media, but it all appears to be one way round. Polanski put something out on Instagram, which is ‘only making plans for Nigel’ with a guillotine, and the police say the evidential bar to act hasn’t been reached. Can you imagine if I did that? I promise you, the evidential bar would be met. And so all of this leads into the perception and feeling of two-tier policing and two-tier justice, and that’s how the country feels, and I think it’s got every right to feel that way.”
But Mr Farage blamed the leadership of the police rather than rank and file officers. “The fish rots from the head down ... the woke culture has completely run through police bosses at the top, and that most of the practitioners on the ground are sort of in despair at what they’re being asked to do.”
Prison proposals
He welcomed the election of former detective Colin Sutton, who led the investigation that caught the killer of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, as a Reform Police and Crime Commissioner in Norfolk. Criminals should be sent overseas to serve sentences in foreign jails in order to prevent early releases, Mr Farage said.
He argued prison overcrowding crisis could be solved party by sending foreign prisoners to serve time in third countries, if it was not possible to deport them to their homeland. “There are 10,800 foreign prisoners. You deport them, either back to their home country, or you find a third party country that is prepared to have them. That would clear space in prison, or by the way, save a fortune. Because having prisoners in this country is very expensive.”
He also called for the creation of emergency prisons, modelled on temporary “Nightingale” hospitals created during the Covid pandemic.
