Nigel Farage has disclosed that he has received explicit death threats on TikTok, with users calling for him to be killed. The police reportedly told him these threats did not meet the threshold for action. That judgement is indefensible in a country where political murders have already taken place.
The deeper question is why such threats are directed at Farage in the first place. The answer lies not in anything he has done to invite violence, but in the way he and Reform are constantly framed. For years, opponents have sought to present them as beyond the pale — branded as far-right or racist. These labels are not careful analysis. They are rhetorical weapons designed to exclude Reform from the ordinary contest of ideas and to create stigma whenever those ideas are heard. When repeated often enough, they create a climate in which intimidation seems less shocking, even less serious. If a party is painted as illegitimate, then by implication its voters are painted as illegitimate too. Millions of citizens are treated as though their voices do not count. In that context, threats against the party’s leader become easier to dismiss.
Reform is a democratic party, openly contesting elections and attracting support from people who feel unrepresented by the main parties. Its platform is built on controlled immigration, secure borders, energy independence, fiscal discipline, investment in policing, and a defence of free expression. These positions sit squarely within the long tradition of British political debate. People may strongly disagree with them, but they do not justify treating the party as untouchable or its leaders as fair game for violent threats.
The police response exposes a serious failure to distinguish between offence and intimidation. Thousands of people have been arrested in recent years for offensive comments online. Many of those comments were unpleasant, some were abusive, but they were not calls to kill. Yet explicit death threats against a national political figure are dismissed as falling below the bar for action. That inversion of priorities undermines confidence in impartial policing and corrodes the principle of equal protection under the law.
A death threat is not simply one more opinion. It is the attempt to end opinion altogether by replacing persuasion with fear. To dismiss such threats is not to defend free speech but to dismantle it. When intimidation becomes normalised, democratic participation shrinks. People weigh up not only whether they can win arguments, but whether they are willing to live with threats to their safety. The result is a thinner, poorer democracy. In the wake of recent assassinations and murders of political figures, these concerns should be taken much more seriously.
The murders of Jo Cox and David Amess, both within the last 10 years, should have made this beyond argument. Britain knows the cost of ignoring political threats. Farage should not have been targeted in this way. Opposition parties and their allies in the media are driving fear because they see that Reform is breaking through and challenging the orthodoxy they rely upon. Above all, the police should not be free to dismiss explicit calls for political murder. Equal protection under the law is not negotiable. Without it, democracy itself is at risk.