Brexit Leader Nigel Farage Blitzed By Milkshake On Campaign Trail
Nigel Farage, who successfully pushed for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in 2016, was assailed with a milkshake Tuesday while on his first day of campaigning for Parliament.
Photographers captured the incident in Clacton, a seaside town where the newly appointed leader of Reform UK, a right-wing populist party, was leaving a pub after giving interviews to the media.
Politico, which spoke with Farage after the incident, said the drink was a “banana-flavored milkshake from McDonald’s” that “soaked his hair, face and parts of his clothes.”
“It was quite violently done. This doesn’t happen to Keir Starmer, this doesn’t happen to Rishi Sunak,” he told the outlet, referencing other U.K. party leaders. “You know why, they don’t go out and meet hundreds of people and this is the risk of doing it.”
Essex Police told the BBC a 25-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of assault.
Shortly after the incident, Farage ― who’s running on a heavy anti-immigration platform ― jokingly posed with a tray of McDonald’s milkshakes in nearby Jaywick.
Tuesday’s milkshake pelter may have been inspired by a man who did the same to Farage on the campaign trail in 2019. That time, it was a banana and salted caramel milkshake from Five Guys.
“I was quite looking forward to it, but I think it went on a better purpose,” Paul Crowther, the man arrested for the incident, told The Guardian at the time.
This is Farage’s eighth time running to be a member of Parliament. None of his attempts have been successful. He announced his eighth campaign Monday after initially saying he wouldn’t be running.
