Anti-terror police called in ahead of expected protests at Reform conference
Counter-terrorism cops have been called in to help secure the building where Reform UK is holding its conference near Birmingham tomorrow.
Nigel Farage’s party has said it is ‘anticipating protests outside the venue’ at the National Exhibition Centre in Marston Green.
It will be the first official gathering of party members, activists and officials since it picked up more than 4 million votes and five MPs at the July 4 General Election.
In the two-and-a-half months since then, membership of the right-wing populist party has grown to more than 80,000 – making it bigger than the SNP.
More than 3,000 tickets are understood to have been sold to the event at the NEC, which will take place over Friday and Saturday.
West Midlands Police will ‘build a network of vigilance’ around the conference, Reform said in a message to attendees, with an operation which may include police dogs and armed officers.
A party spokesperson said: ‘In the shadow of the murder of David Amess, this is very sadly where we are.’
He added that security was taken particularly seriously as ‘Nigel has been in receipt of credible death threats’.
During a phone-in on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show this morning, Farage said those risks were the reason he has not yet held any in-person surgeries in his Clacton constituency.
He told a listener: ‘Am I allowing the public to flow through the door with their knives in their pockets? No, I’m not.’
The Reform leader blamed ‘incitement’ from ‘Labour and Conservative politicians’ for a poll that found 51% of Brits think he was personally responsible for the riots that spread across the UK this summer.
Farage also defended Donald Trump’s recent inflammatory claims that Haitian immigrants were eating family pets in an Ohio city, saying the former US president is usually ‘proven to be right’ about such things.
Immediately after the phone-in ended, with Farage still in the studio, LBC presenter James O’Brien began his own show with an indirect but unsubtle series of digs at the politician.
This morning, the new MP also announced he would be giving up his ownership of Reform UK.
The party was originally created as a private limited company with Farage holding most of the shares, but he said he was now ‘giving ownership of the party and the big decisions over to the members’.
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