Removing hecklers is fair game – assaulting them is not

On the school run across the years, there’s a conversation I’ve had separately with each of my kids. At pick-up, a teacher will have informed me that my son or daughter hit a classmate. And, after wading through my child’s confusing tale of righteous indignation, I’ll end up having to explain the difference between reasons and excuses.

‘He stole my rubber.’ ‘She tore my picture.’ These are reasons. They can be good reasons. Even great reasons. But they aren’t excuses. Because, when it comes to violence, apart from self-defence, there is no excuse.

Perhaps I need to take a little ride with Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick and explain this concept to him. Making the media rounds on Sunday morning, the crack tag team of Lewis Goodall on LBC and Jon Sopel on Sky News confronted him with what I imagine they had hoped would be embarrassing footage.

The previous day, as Nigel Farage gave his speech at the Reform conference, various outside activists stood on their chairs and started heckling him. Annoying? Yes. Rude? Yes. Tiresome? Yes. But not excuses for the physical assaults that then came from various Reform delegates.

In one clip, a young woman is fish-hooked from behind, her head pulled back by an elderly man with his hand in her mouth, as he also hits her on the head with a crutch. Simultaneously, an elderly woman yanks her hair as the protester is being led off in the opposite direction. A different clip shows another young woman grabbed by the back of the neck and pushed to the ground by a male delegate, as what appears to be the same man from the first clip hits her on the back with the same crutch.

Jenrick must surely have known about the footage, which is what makes it so incredible that his response was to laugh it off. There was no embarrassment from Jenrick at all. In fact, he was incredulous that this was even an issue. ‘We’re now in a country… where a far-left protester goes into a party conference, tries to wreck the leader’s speech and cries foul if a pensioner knocks her over the head with a Zimmer frame? I mean, come on, get a life’, he told Sopel.

Well, at the risk of sounding like a sententious prick, ‘crying foul’ over what appear to be assaults is exactly the kind of country I want to live in. And that’s the kind of country Jenrick and Reform should be trying to maintain after a decade of increasing political violence, particularly from the left.

Jenrick did not need to resort to flippancy. He could even have attempted to explain the outburst. He could have pointed to the anger and fear caused by Ann Widdecombe’s alleged murder – or to the behaviour of other protesters outside the venue, who had reportedly been intimidating delegates throughout the weekend. You can have sympathy with those who manhandled the protesters or even understand why they did so. But that’s not the same as officially condoning it.

A universal rule of politics is that anything one party justifies in a moment of expediency will later be used against it, when the shoe’s on the other foot. What will the response be next time some idiot throws a milkshake at Nigel Farage, or worse? When you legitimise some political violence, where does it end? Lines in the sand exist for a reason. They’re delicate constructs that, once rubbed away, can be difficult to find your way back to.

Reform UK’s media strategists were totally correct that Jenrick’s response would play well to the party faithful. They called it right that most of the electorate is sick of far-left activists closing down motorways, chanting for the death of Jews and celebrating the murder of those with different opinions. They are right that there is a stench of hypocrisy from those now calling out violence against left-wing activists, after assiduously ignoring so much violence committed by left-wing activists. We can understand all of that. But what the British public also understands, or at least you’d hope politicians would encourage us to understand, is principle. Principle means being able to stand up to those on ‘your side’. Principle means defending free speech as the alternative to violence – even if the other side is actively trying to prevent yours. Especially then, in fact.

The clips from the Reform conference do not show a crowd afraid for their safety – they reveal a frustrated, angry mob taking the opportunity to get the boot in. I totally understand why they were angry. But it’s still not an excuse.

Josh Howie is a stand-up comedian and host of Free Speech Nation on GB News. Follow him on X: @joshxhowie.