UK election 2024: Reform leader Nigel Farage attacked with milkshake on campaign trail

Nigel Farage said it was “quite frightening” to be attacked with a milkshake during his first day campaigning as Reform leader and the party’s parliamentary candidate for Clacton.

A woman was arrested on Tuesday afternoon after a milkshake was thrown at Farage as he relaunched Reform’s general election campaign.

The drink was bought at McDonald’s and thrown at Farage — who has returned to frontline politics to lead the right-wing party into the July 4 election — as he left a Wetherspoon pub in the Essex seaside town.

Farage told ITV News Politics: “I don’t know what was thrown at me, but it hit me in the face, fair and square, quite frightening.”

Asked why he thought he had been targeted again following a similar incident in 2019, he said: “Because I go out and meet the public, nobody else does. What does Rishi do? He gets a room with two dozen councillors or whatever it is. Nobody goes out and does the old-style street campaigning the way that I do. And this is the risk that goes with it, and I’ll be honest, it is quite scary.”

A visibly emotional Farage was asked if he thought about what would happen if it was something “more serious” than a milkshake. He replied: “That’s a very tough question to answer. I try not to.”

It came after Farage used a campaign update posted to his social media channels to claim voters were rejecting the Conservatives and Labour like never before, branding Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer “big state social democrats”.

“There is a rejection of our political classes on a level I’ve never seen before,” he said. “Brexit was a symptom of that — nobody thought Brexit would happen, but it bloomin’ well did.

“People are rejecting this political class, Sunak’s Conservatives, Starmer’s Labour. They’re both big state social democrats. This is a real, real alternative, I’ve got to tell you it’s pretty exciting out there. I reckon this time next week the opinion polls will look very, very different out there.”

In his address in Clacton, the seat he will fight for on July 4, he urged prospective constituents to “send him to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance”.