The SHOCKING Assault Defended By Reform

British politics can sometimes feel like a battle of the generations. Young people, on the whole, on average, are more likely to care about climate change, support migrants' rights, and vote for Labour or the Greens. Old people are, on average, less likely to care about climate change and more likely to vote for right-wing parties. Again, on average. This is not to say there aren't very right-wing young people and very left-wing old people, but on average, that's the case. And footage from Reform's conference on Friday has become a grim representation of just how toxic such a divide can become. So, that was a young climate protester who interrupted Nigel Farage's conference speech having her hair pulled, her mouth like grabbed, really, really aggressive, um by conference attendants attendees who looked on the elderly side, um and she was hit with a crutch. Now, a younger or another young female, I should say, another young female protester was hit with a walking stick as she was pushed to the ground. Now, remember, Reform UK is actively campaigning to abandon net zero, to end all subsidies for renewable energy, and to expand fossil fuels, and to give even more licenses in the North Sea. Now, those are policies which will disproportionately screw over younger generations, um but if you make that point at a Reform conference, you might just get battered with a walking stick. And when Nigel Farage made no effort to calm his militant crowd. >> This is a continuity government. Oh, we got a screamer. We got a screamer. We got a screamer. Ah, lovely. Oh, dear, oh dear. These are the benefits of a university education, folks. Yeah. I bet SHE'S STUDYING TELL US, LOVE, IS IT SOCIOLOGY, is it? Yeah, I bet it is. That poor young girl, she looked like she was going to do herself an injury, didn't she? Well, there's a saying I've got for that. You know what it is, don't you? Boring, boring, boring. >> I still haven't quite worked out why they had boring, boring, boring ready to be flashed behind. >> knew it was going to happen. >> Oh, and and and the boring, boring, boring was always specifically going to be to the >> In case there's a protester. >> Right. So, I cuz I hadn't watched the whole speech, I was wondering if this was a new slogan from Reform. And I was like, >> It's replaced education, education, education. >> Right, we should have had this conversation before we went live. But anyway, thank you very much for that context. That was very important. Um, again, in terms of the generational battle here, I know there are lots of people who really don't like it when we talk about the idea that there might be generational conflict because obviously, if you're an older left-wing person of whom there are thousands and millions, I that will piss you off, but I mean, the generational aspect there wasn't particularly subtle, right? You saw that the young climate protesters protesting about climate getting dragged by older people sort of basically putting their hand in her mouth and then Nigel Farage specifically mocking them as students, university university students who are probably studying something silly. Um, in terms of Farage sort of saying, "Oh, she looked like she might be getting hurt there." Um, and and not condemning it. Now, someone might say, "Okay, maybe he couldn't tell exactly what had happened um from where he was standing. Maybe he didn't quite understand the violence that those protesters were subjected to." However, even with the benefit of close-up video, Reform politicians still defended the actions of their members and fans. >> I just wanted to just get your reaction to how some of your delegates responded to one of the hecklers who I accept irritatingly, although exercising their democratic rights, uh responded during Mr. Farage's speech yesterday. Just have a look at this. Heavy-handed? Literally? Disproportionate? What would you expect them to do? Well, they could have just led her out rather than attacking her. Right. They probably didn't need to be probably didn't need to be clubbed with a crutch. From what I understand, she was >> that person. Not at all. She got clubbed with a crutch. I I'm going to make you You're really saying that a climate wherever she is, a far-left activist a far-left activist come on come on is that the politics you want infiltrates a party conference stands on a chair screams abuse at the leader of a party tries to disrupt a party conference and then she and then she's moaning that a pensioner a pensioner knocked her on the head with a crutch. I mean, come on. You get a life. Like you take your chances, don't you? >> She's literally being surrounded by all of those. You have zero sympathy. >> Well, clearly so. >> Such a slippery [ __ ] Like obviously stands for nothing, by the way. Like he's he's at He he used to be sort of on the kind of liberal wing of the conservatives and now as a sort of massive careerist is out here saying that like grabbing someone's head like the videos that look so horrible like really yanking someone's hair like covering their mouth with your hands and whacking them with a crutch. That's just not nice. >> What did she expect? >> Tell you something, Michael. And this is a word of warning for anyone. If a hand goes near my mouth, you're losing a finger. >> Mhm. Oh, that would that would have been an even better video, wouldn't it? Um not that we'd condone that either. Uh obviously that was Robert Jenrick speaking to Lewis Goodall on LBC. LBC also managed to speak to one of those protesters um to get her side of the story. >> Can you tell us where you're from and why you did this? >> I am part of Climate Resistance and as a campaign we are here to resist reform um and to stop the Nigel Farage from peddling his lies and highlight that he is backed by billionaires to serve the super wealthy. >> Why specifically you against reform other than rather than other political parties? >> I think the climate around our politics in the UK is quite concerning right now. Reform is specifically peddling a lot of lies and a lot of hatred. It is a party that is just kind of founded on yeah, I think just kind of peddling a lot of hatred and sort of stirring a lot of pots and it was all done so that Nigel Farage can get all of these wealthy donations from like billionaires and get him and his greedy mates wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and I think that's a very dangerous thing. I was yanked by my hair. I had people pull me in various different directions. I've already shown you the bruise that I've got on my arm and this was within the first 5 minutes. I then got pulled my hair pulled multiple times by the security guards and then when I complained and said please don't pull my hair again, I was put on the floor and when they went to pick me up again, there was a security guard stood on my hair which was obviously incredibly painful and when I complained once more, they held my weight from my hair. >> I'm going to speak with Ash in a moment about sort of the significance of this protest, what it says about our political culture and first of all caught up earlier with someone from climate resistance. That's the group behind these protests at Reform's conference. >> I think the the rise of Reform in the past year, year and a half has been a threat to the royal left and to this country and a big part of that is climate but the members of climate resistance we we're worried about more than just on net zero targets and the threat that the Reform faces for migrant rights for climate, for queer rights, for our public services, we think are a really big big problem. And we've kind of seen how Farage and and this party has kind of pulled the country right with his unfortunate charisma. And what they are doing on climate is rolling back net zero commitments in every council they're in they're in control of and are politicizing the issue when many parts of climate policy are just common sense. >> And you weren't one of the protesters this year, but you protested Reform's conference last year. I think by Was it by heckling Nigel Farage's speech again? Or just I suppose just tell me what you did and tell me what what happened afterwards. >> Last year we were running a different campaign called abolish billionaires, but with Nigel Farage and Reform Party being one that wants to take away services from people and take these massive donations from crypto billionaires like Christopher Harborne, we figured that protesting the conference last year would have been would be a good idea. A place to to get our message out there and contextualize Reform better. And yeah, so I did basically the same as what everyone has seen from Friday. I got up on a chair. I said, "Michael, you don't work at Michael." Nigel You're not one of the people you work for the billionaires. And as as soon as I got that line out, a man sitting two seats next to me dragged me down. I fell onto someone in the row in front of me. Kind of got this like black eye and was dragged out by the rest of the row until the security got me and threw me out the back. So yeah, got some personal experience but the scenes that we saw on Friday and everyone has been talking about online have been quite scary cuz there's from this previous experience we expected a uh a difficult response. Um But the opportunism um uh to kind of take take a shot at a lefty at a lefty woman seemed uh was quite scary. Um and but I think what was more terrifying about the whole thing was the way that the leaders of the party have been reacting. You saw um Farage um kind of basically implying that the woman kind of brought it on herself at the time saying like if if if if she does if she doesn't want that she's she's going to hurt herself. She he was four that was like four rows of seats between him and and and the first incident. Um so he had a good view. He he would have seen the assaults. Um and then we have Lee Anderson's comments and we've had Robert Jenrick dismissing and we haven't had anything like a sincere like sincere apology or a condemnation of the sort of behavior. I don't know what speaks to the sort of culture that Reform have built in the party. >> And I think you know most right-thinking people will look at that video of you know the the people grabbing that young woman's mouth and then hitting her with a walking stick and find it disgraceful and find sort of Reform's sort of I suppose celebration of it in a way or sort of brushing it off as as pretty grotesque. Um I said at the same time what what is the theory of change of sort of standing up and and heckling? Cuz presumably there will be a lot of people in the crowd who just find it very annoying and is there a worry that it's all polarizes people against the climate movement and so climate change is an issue, especially as you're very much sort of identifying as young lefties and that might be seen to sort of feed into the culture war to some degree. I don't know what do you think of that? >> That's something we've spoken about a lot. I think when we started this campaign beginning of the year, we spent a lot of time strategizing and we thought about our our messaging very clearly. And um there were a few parts that one is going after reform on the issues that their own voters don't like and that people who are curious about voting reform do not like them on. And um a big problem that people have with Reform are the corporate and corporate interests. The the sort of I mean as we've seen with these donation scandals um when Reform aren't talking about migration um when they're not talking about uh maybe benefit slashing there's there's uh they get a lot of pushback and you see pushback from people on the right as well. Um and I think it with the research we were doing we were thinking about the particular kind of target audience we wanted our messages to reach. And I think within Reform members you have two groups. You have like the blue Reform, they've been Tories most of their life and they were disappointed by the Tories so now they're going for Reform. We also have this red Reform where you have people who are in the red wall um uh lifelong Labour voters have been let down by austerity for years and and now have a Labour government that have come in in the couple of years and probably not really changed their lives very much. Um I think lots of people on the left feel that way uh and are looking for a party with some bolder ambition. Um and so our goal was really to speak to these people and go, "Okay, like uh the uh reform of working in the interest of the ultra-wealthy and like Nigel Farage voted against uh voted for keeping zero-hour contracts. Um they they like they don't give a lot of uh policies which the working class would benefit from in a material way. Um and and so being able to speak to to those in the reform who are economically left in their um in their opinions and highlighting that is is our goal and that's why we've kept our our campaign very much about connections to billionaires and uh the sort of corruption inside the the party. >> That was someone from Climate Resistance talking to me earlier today. Um Ash, I know it's sort of it's very contentious to talk about sort of like generational conflict in politics cuz people think it's divisive. Like it's not it's not just about class, it's also about like age. But given voting patterns in the UK and especially the issue of climate. So I think this comes up in issues of housing, it comes up in issues of sort of um benefits with sort of pensions very well defended and other benefits sort of cut and then in in climate where you've got older people voting for parties who want to get rid of net zero and and younger people voting for parties who want tougher climate action. Obviously climate change is going to affect young people to a greater extent. That image of like two fairly elderly people sort of just pulling that girl down to the ground by her hair and hitting them with a walking stick. There was something sort of arresting about it, wasn't there? >> I so the thing is is that I don't think that's necessarily a good generational picture, right? Because I don't think most people in their 60s and 70s are fantasizing about ripping a young woman's hair out. >> Yeah. >> Um but I think all of us can think of people who we know or have encountered who are older and have a very sort of libidinal, vitriolic loathing of young people. Right? Like there there is something which is very close to the surface and is very um explosive when it finds an outlet. And you know, not saying that it has to necessarily be political, all right? Like we've all encountered that with like riding your bikes past the wrong neighbor's house or something. So I wouldn't say that this is a picture of most older voters. I wouldn't even say this is a picture of most older Reform voters, but I do think that it is part of a story of resentment and grievance and the fantasy of doing harm to those who you suspect hold you in contempt, which is actually a part of the kind of um unconscious emotional storytelling of Reform. Because look at the way in which Farage played into it. She probably studied socio- studied sociology. She's a screamer, right? The sort of latent misogyny of she's a screamer who probably studied sociology and that um hair ripping, it really is a desire to do harm to someone not in spite of the fact that they're a young female, you know, who looks like they might be middle class, but precisely because they're a young female who looks like they could be middle class. It's this outpouring of revenge for what you imagine is going on in her head and in the heads of people like her. It's you hold us and what we stand for in disdain and now we're going to [ __ ] get you. >> Mhm. Yeah, it's such an unpleasant image and then to just come out and all of them defend it is super super gross. Uh >> I mean this look so this is what one thing about Robert Jenrick, a man who believes in nothing but his own advancement. A man for whom Ozempic has done wonders for his figure if he has taken it, but it's in danger of um his metabolism now eating away at his own brain cells, right? Because this is someone who has no coherent moral vision whatsoever. I can imagine take say Jacob Rees-Mogg, all right? A man with whom I do not share politics, but he's a man who will take certain positions because he goes, "Well, this is the consistent thing to do." He did around Shamima Begum. He was like, "We should brought to this country and dealt with by an English court." You could imagine a Jacob Rees-Mogg sort of saying, "Well, this is democracy, you know." >> Yeah. >> That you know, of course they yell at me and of course I shall find it annoying and da da da da da. Robert Jenrick and and reform is not about um appearing to have confidence in the establishment that you represent. It's about being constantly aggrieved, constantly resentful, constantly vengeful. And that's why, you know, he he didn't just stop at the Louis Goodall interview when he said, "You know, what do you want them to do? Well, you know, she's a left-wing activist." When he was asked about on Sky News, he went, "Well, boo-hoo." And the thing about Robert Jenrick is that I don't even think he's got the stones to be a real bully. I don't think he was ever that guy. I think he was always the little twerp egging on the bully. And the minute the minute that bully gets in trouble, parents are called in, teachers called in, they pretend that they had nothing to do with it. So, I've got more contempt for the likes of Jenrick than I do for the likes of say a Trump or a Farage. >> Yeah, I mean he's he's just the most slimy, dislikable character in Britain, I think, right now. >> He's saying something. >> And I think that unites quite a lot of people. Every people across the political spectrum hate Robert Jenrick.