Nigel Farage's security team has been filmed manhandling a disabled pensioner during a parking dispute in Shetland, ahead of the Scottish elections on May 7. The incident occurred after the Reform UK leader's car was parked in a disabled bay.
Don Whittle, 73, who suffers from heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, and spinal stenosis, and has a pacemaker, said he needed the space to drop off his wife. When he found it occupied, he began taking photographs of the vehicle. Farage's associates then moved the car to double yellow lines, and Whittle continued photographing.
Whittle told the Daily Record that when he tried to walk between cars to take pictures of them blocking the road, a security guard physically blocked him. He said: 'This clown wouldn’t let me through. I just wanted to get through to the front to take pictures of them blocking the street.' He added that two 'henchmen' then 'manhandled me across the road' without asking or showing consideration for his disability.
Shetland Labour candidate John Erskine, who witnessed the clash, described it as 'shocking' to see Farage 'bulldoze' into the area and 'start picking fights with local people'. He said: 'A disabled pensioner was unable to access a space he needed, and when he challenged it, he was met with heavy-handed behaviour from Farage’s entourage.'
The incident follows another confrontation in Shetland where locals heckled Farage, calling him a 'scrounger' after he suggested the UK needed more people in politics to make money. One local retorted: 'More billionaires in politics? That's your ideas, more successful billionaires, scroungers like yourself?'
