Nigel Farage has launched a blistering attack on Britain’s police forces, accusing senior officers of allowing a “woke culture” to infect policing and create a system that is biased against the Right.
The Reform UK leader compared Britain with authoritarian states including Russia and Communist China, claiming officers were increasingly being dragged into rows over social media posts while criminals escaped scrutiny.
His explosive intervention follows a string of cases in which police have visited people after complaints about comments made online.
Mr Farage also attacked what he described as a glaring double standard after the Metropolitan Police decided not to take action over a social media post by Green Party leader Zack Polanski.
Mr Polanski shared a photograph of a man wearing a T-shirt featuring a guillotine alongside the words “we’re only making plans for Nigel”. He later described the post as an “inadvertent mistake” but did not apologise.
Mr Farage said: “There were more knocks at the door in this country in 2025 than there were in Communist China or Russia.”
He added: “People do say horrible things on social media, but it all appears to be one way round.”
The Reform leader claimed that had he shared the same image, police would have treated the matter differently.
“Can you imagine if I did that? I promise you, the evidential bar would be met,” he said.
His comments will fuel the increasingly bitter row over allegations of “two-tier policing” — claims repeatedly rejected by police leaders.
Mr Farage insisted his criticism was aimed primarily at senior leadership rather than frontline officers.
“The fish rots from the head down,” he said, arguing that “woke culture” had spread through police management while rank-and-file officers were left frustrated by the demands placed upon them.
He pointed to the election of former detective Colin Sutton as a Reform police and crime commissioner in Norfolk as evidence of what he believes can be achieved by bringing experienced investigators into senior policing roles.
Mr Farage also demanded a radical response to Britain’s prison overcrowding crisis.
He called for foreign criminals to serve their sentences overseas, arguing that prisoners who cannot be deported to their home countries should potentially be transferred to third countries willing to accept them.
“There are 10,800 foreign prisoners,” he said, arguing that removing them from the British prison system could free capacity and reduce costs.
He also called for emergency prisons modelled on the temporary “Nightingale” hospitals created during the Covid pandemic.
The proposals form part of a wider Reform argument that Britain’s criminal justice system is simultaneously too intrusive towards ordinary citizens and too weak against serious offenders — a charge that is likely to intensify the political battle over policing, prisons and public order.
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