Reform has vowed to take on the UK’s public prosecutor if it fails to charge men who allegedly assaulted police officers at a British airport 11 weeks ago, which they say has become a prominent example of two-tier justice.
“Everyone knows” there is a growing perception that “we are living in a state of two-tier policing and two-tier justice”, Nigel Farage MP said on Monday. The Brexit boss and Reform UK leader asserted instances of criminals being released on short sentences while members of the public get “very, very stiff prison sentences for saying beastly things on social media” had left “millions of people are scratching their heads.”
Speaking with Richard Tice MP, the Reform men said one of the most egregious recent examples is the differential in approach by police and prosecutors to two events of members of the public attacking police. Citing the Manchester Airport incident, which as the pair reminded now took place 11 weeks ago, they portrayed as inexcusable that after so long no charges had been brought against the alleged perpetrators of violence against police officers despite clear video evidence.
The incident has been “somewhat buried, forgotten about”, Farage said, while Tice said the public want “Prompt, fair justice” for all criminals regardless of their background: it has been alleged by some the Manchester incident got softer treatment because the alleged perpetrators were from a minority community, compared to the white working class people convicted of police attacks that came in the nationwide anti-mass-migration riots just two weeks later.
There was serious unrest over the Manchester Airport incident too, especially given the first footage made public only showed a very rough arrest, leading to accusations of racism and police brutality. Only days later did the full footage emerge, which went some way to exonerating the police. Today, Reform UK cited internal sources to accuse Greater Manchester Police of obfuscating the truth by covering up the full footage, and after it leaked anyway then going after the whistle-blower as their apparent first priority.
Tice said: “this is what we’ve learnt from our sources. It turns out that someone very senior in the Greater Manchester Police, possibly higher but we think right at the top of the police, made a deliberate decision to withhold the full footage shortly after the incident… if it had been released we would not be where we are. That is absolutely extraordinary”.
While the MP said whoever leaked the footage “frankly, has done a great service to the national public interest”, Tice and Farage stopped short of saying the footage being withheld was an outright conspiracy, implying it could instead have been common-or-garden incompetence.
As for next moves in Reform’s crusade against “two-tier policing and two-tier justice”, the group of the Party’s MPs have written to the government to serve notice on what they imply are delaying tactics in charging the Manchester Airport suspects, calling the attempts to allegedly find a way out of charging anyone at all “totally unacceptable”.
“If the [Criminal Prosecution Service] is not going to charge the assailants, then we will organise a private criminal prosecution against them”, Reform promised, while also alluding to further action against the police and prosecutors themselves, leaving an open-ended question over “misconduct or misfeasance in public office”.
While such action may seem at first flush far-fetched, Farage certainly has a strong track record for picking up and running with otherwise relatively niche political causes and getting results. His campaign on banking reform, particularly on debanking for political views saw one of the most prominent businesswomen in Britain fall on her sword rather than be sacked as CEO of NatWest Bank.