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Good morning. It didn’t last long. Yesterday afternoon in the House of Commons, as John Crace reports, there was a rare outburst of reasonableness as MPs debated the death of Ann Widdecombe. Earlier in the day Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, had been on social media claiming that the establishment wanted Nigel Farage dead and, after the police revealed counter-terrorism officers were now in charge of the murder investigation, demanding apologies all round from anyone who accused Reform UK of politicising the tragedy. But in the Commons Tice dropped these arguments, and instead focused mostly on a warm and funny tribute to Widdecombe. And Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, avoided the temptation to criticise Reform UK, and instead made a point of saying how much she understood Farage’s concerns.
It was an almost cordial end to a day that had started with social media reaction at its most unpleasant. There is more coverage on Today in Focus here, or in our overnight splash story here.
This morning it was back to normal. Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson, was on the Today programme and he revived all the Farage security grievances from the weekend. Here are the key quotes.
The government chose not to give Nigel the security that he needed. They now have, as a result of Ann Widdecombe’s appalling murder, offered him a meeting.
The home secretary could have offered that meeting a year ago, two years ago. She chose not to.
That, I’m afraid, is playing politics with the safety of politicians.
And I suspect that’s because they don’t like the views the Reform politicians take forward.
Because we are not mainstream politicians. We are politicians who are fighting the establishment every single day. We are not backing down.
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Jenrick accepted that Farage had turned down a significant offer of government-funded security last year. He was asked about a report in the i saying Farage “turned down taxpayer-funded security including a bodyguard, car and trained driver last year”. In their story, Arj Singh, Caroline Wheeler and Kitty Donaldson say:
The Reform UK leader was offered the protection following police advice on the threats he faced.
He had already been receiving publicly funded security prior to this, and felt that his package had been downgraded.
It would have given Farage a similar level of security to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and some high-profile Cabinet ministers.
Farage declined the offer because he considered the protection to be inadequate.
Asked about the story, Jenrick did not contest the details and accepted that Farage had turned down the security he had been offered because he did not view it as adequate.
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Jenrick dismissed claims that politics was not involved in the decision about what security Farage should be offered. Decisions about what security gets offered to politicians like Farage are taken by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), the body in charge of VIP protection. In the Commons yesterday, Mahmood said this body, which is run by officials, was, and should be, “fiercely independent”. But, when this argument was put to Jenrick, he did not accept it. He said:
That’s a choice. The home secretary is not powerless … I think it’s within her power to overrule it if she wished to.
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Jenrick brushed off claims that Farage is deliberately talking up the security threats he faces because he wants to distract public attention from the controversy about his failure to register donations from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne and from the convicted fraudster George Cottrell. When this was put to Jenrick, he repeated his point about the security threats to Farage being genuine, and his claim that they weren’t being taken seriously by the government.
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But Jenrick did not go as far as endorsing a claim made by his Reform UK colleague Zia Yusuf, who yesterday said: “None of the government, the Speaker nor the police care at all about the security of Reform MPs.”. Jenrick just argued instead that the security concerns of Reform UK MPs were not being taken seriously because of their political views.
Reform MPs are not asking for special treatment.
What Reform MPs want is to be able to go home to their family at the end of the day in safety, and to know that their homes and their loved ones are protected.
There is a legitimate concern that Reform MPs are more endangered than many others, because we raise issues that many mainstream politicians shy away from.
If you talk about Islamist extremism, as I do, and Nigel Farage has done for many years, you are likely to be in considerably more danger than those who don’t.
Nick Robinson, the presenter, pointed out that this was not a view that the family of Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered ۱۰ years ago by a rightwing extremist, would endorse, or Diane Abbott, the suspended Labour MP who receives a record amount of online abuse.
I do think it was wrong that parts of the media claimed that Nigel was politicising the death of Ann Widdecombe, an appalling claim when he was about mourning the death of a loved colleague.
And he has been vindicated now because the police have admitted that the murderer may well have had a terrorist or political motivation.
Here is the agenda for the day.
۹.۴۵am: Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.
Morning: Keir Starmer attends the Bastille Day parade in Paris.
۱۱.۳۰am: James Murray, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After ۱۲.۳۰pm: MPs start their debate on the remaining stages of the public office (accountability) bill, aka the Hillsborough law bill. Keir Starmer is expected to lead for the government at third reading, which may not start until ۶pm. First MPs will debate amendments at the report stage.
۱.۳۰pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gives a speech at the Institute for Government.
۲pm: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.
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