By James Kirkup 23 Mar 2015
Disagree with the Ukip leader? Fine. But don't frighten his family, or wish him dead
A man, a woman and two children walk into a bar. Dozens of people surround them, shouting. When they leave the pub, the people surround their car and keep shouting. Not much of a punch line, but then this isn't a joke. It's what happened to an elected politician yesterday.
The fact that the politician is Nigel Farage is irrelevant. What happened yesterday in Downe, Kent, should not happen. This is not how a decent society conducts itself.
Yes, I know Mr Farage and his party hold some views that some (many?) people find repellent. I make no secret of my strong disagreement with Ukip on several of its central arguments, especially immigration. But believing someone is wrong is no excuse for abusing them, verbally, physically or otherwise. And doing so in the presence of their family is wholly beyond the pale.
The George and Dragon in Downe
This isn't an isolated incident either. There's something about Mr Farage that seems to persuade some people that the normal rules of decency and civilised discourse don't apply. This month he published a book, serialised here, recounting the potentially life-threatening cancer he suffered when he was in his 20s. In his account, NHS staff failed to spot the condition, leading him to suggest that NHS "incompetence and negligence" nearly killed him. And when we reported that, countless people on Twitter and elsewhere responded with jokes to the effect of "another NHS failure" and "must try harder next time".
• Farage: 'Protesters were a 'feral mob of subsidised students'
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In other words, a man criticised the NHS, and people responded by wishing him dead. Sorry, but I don't care how morally outraged you feel by Ukip's stupid, horrible and misguided views. Your moral indignation doesn't justify the sort of treatment Mr Farage gets.
• In pictures: A history of politicians who've been egged
To be fair, this is part of a wider trend towards treating our politicians as if they were less deserving of basic courtesy and respect than the rest of us, a coarsening of political conversation that should worry us all. The celebrity cook Jack Monroe's inexcusable comment about David Cameron's dead child is a good example of the sort of thing that would never be said about someone in any other field.
The internet doesn't help either. Anonymity and immediacy create the perfect environment for stupid, hateful heat-of-the-moment comments by people who in real life are essentially decent and respectful. (I don't just mean the CyberNats either; some Ukippers are just vile online, and of course the other parties have their poison-pen factions too.)
The politicians don't always help either. The way the Tories have pursued questions about the legal status of Ed Miliband's parents' house has brought them unpleasantly close to scoring points from the death of Mr Miliband's father. George Osborne's sneering joke about the subject in the Budget last week left some of his colleagues feeling privately queasy, and rightly so.
But it's Mr Farage who does seem to get the worst abuse. That's wrong and should stop. It's just not British.
• Ukip leader Nigel Farage attacked with an egg on campaign trail
• Nigel Farage abandons walkabout in Rotherham as protesters blockade him in Ukip officeThere's a lot of debate about Britishness, of course. It's become common to define Britishness as tolerance but that's wrong. Being British doesn't mean being tolerant. It means being polite. So polite that when someone stands on your toe or bumps into you on the bus, you're the one who says sorry. So polite that when we're about to call someone an idiot, we start by saying "with all due respect."
And so polite that when someone goes around our country saying things we find stupid and hateful and divisive, we hear him out in respectful silence and then explain that we simply happen to hold a different view.
Anti UKIP campaigners have chased Nigel Farage down the road after a protest was staged in the local pub of the UKIP leader in the village of Downe, Kent (Levi Hinds)
Disagree with Mr Farage? Fine. Call him a fool and a knave and a demagogue offering facile and counterproductive solutions to problems he doesn't really understand. Call him, with all due respect, a nasty man. But do it calmly and politely and without raising your voice, either physically or electronically.
And don't frighten his family, or wish him dead, or otherwise break the basic rules of courtesy and decency that make Britain Britain. Please.
The abuse of Nigel Farage is disgraceful - and just not British - Telegraph
