In a right panic? Farage's rhetoric this week hints at trouble ahead for Reform

Nigel Farage’s self-confidence is famously iron-clad. But just before 12.30pm on Wednesday, as a visibly angry Keir Starmer tore into the Reform UK leader’s “unforgivable” response to the murder of Henry Nowak, Farage’s attempts to laugh off the criticism were unconvincing. He was rattled.

- Peter Walker, Alexandra Topping

This has been a curious week for Farage. The headlines have been dominated by a story seemingly tailor-made for his culture war instincts. But some believe that this time he may well have overplayed his hand.

The appalling last moments of 18-year-old Nowak, who was handcuffed as he lay dying by police officers who wrongly believed they had been called to a racist assault carried out by the student, have dominated X for weeks, with the platform’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, posting repeatedly about it.

UK court reporting rules had stopped Farage and others from joining in before Vickrum Digwa, who stabbed Nowak to death and then lied that he had been the victim, was convicted of murder last week.

On Tuesday, after Digwa was sentenced, Farage fully entered the fray. To those who follow his rhetoric, the portentously billed “emergency address” was notably more hard-right and nativist in its language and approach.

Hampshire police’s treatment of Nowak was proof, he said, of “a two-tier culture in this country, where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities”.

Recent figures show Hampshire police officers are more than five times as likely to stop and search black people as white people.

In messaging that echoed elements of the European far right as well as the Trump administration, Farage contrasted the treatment of minority-ethnic Britons with that of white citizens whose ancestors may have lived in the UK “for centuries”.

He also claimed that many police promotions happened not because of merit but because of an officer’s race or religion.

British people, he concluded with ominous gravity, should respond with “pure, cold rage”.

The actual response was a chaotic semi-riot in Southampton, where an unseemly mix of angry locals and self-promoting white nationalists threw bins and other objects at police, leaving many residents terrified.