Dear John,
Richard Tice doesn’t seem to understand how the rule of law is meant to work. On TalkTV yesterday afternoon, the Deputy Leader of Reform UK endorsed police brutality, referring to footage of a policeman brutally stomping on a (already surrendered) suspect’s head at Manchester airport as “reassuring.” It reflects on Reform UK’s broader detachment from the classical British values of fairness and decency.
Tice showed off his inner authoritarian, choosing violent summary action from a rogue officer rather than the tried and true method of dispensing justice: due process and a fair trial. If that suspect was guilty, he should have faced a court rather than on-the-spot brutality. That’s, at an extremely basic level, how the rule of law works.
As we’ve pointed out before, these people aren’t as far away from the heart of government as we may like to think. Farage has ambitions for a 2029 run at Downing Street, and the volatility of British politics in its current state – as well as the international ascendancy of the far-right – may gave him his window of opportunity. Take a moment to picture it.
Under that regrettable Reform UK government, Tice himself could serve as Britain’s Home Secretary. A person so delighted to dole out arbitrary police violence serving in such a position could make Suella Braverman or Priti Patel’s tenure in the Home Office look wholesome and gentle by comparison. Imagine living in a country where, from the highest levels of power, police are encouraged to dole out justice on their own terms. It goes against the fundamental principles of the British legal system.
Tice’s reaction to the clip exposes, once again, Reform’s cynicism and two-facedness. They cloak themselves in the language of freedom, democracy, and “British values”, yet showcase their utter contempt for those concepts the second it gets in the way of igniting their culture wars or beating up on ethnic minorities. It’s worth asking – would Tice have been so adamant about this if it was a White far-right agitator being stomped on instead?
These Blackshirts may be thinly veiled in their office attire, but when Tice tells you who he is, it’s best to listen. We won’t stop pushing this government to shore up our broken campaign finance, media and electoral systems to keep Britain’s rising authoritarians as far away from the levers of power as possible.
