Nigel Farage has welcomed the revival of the police investigation into an alleged arson attack on his home, saying it is directly linked to the murder of Ann Widdecombe. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
At a press conference today, Farage, responding to a question from Jack Elsom of The Sun, said he had not mentioned the incident at his home for a year because he generally does not talk publicly about security concerns. He said he spoke about it in the context of needing security for the rest of his life, but most media organizations called him a liar.
Farage said there was an arson and an attempted forcing of the door at his home. He had mentioned this in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, but journalists noted that the interview was given as a "spoiler" before the Guardian published a story about an undisclosed £5m donation from cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne. Farage said the donation was unrelated to his political work and was a gift to fund his security for life.
The Observer reported that police recorded the incident as an attempted burglary, not arson. In his response, Farage said there was an investigation, counter-terrorism police made mistakes and referred themselves to the Independent Office of Police Complaints. He called this an unprecedented move and said it is directly linked to the murder of Ann Widdecombe.
Farage said: "It's a great, great tragedy that it took the death of Ann for the security services in Britain to finally take seriously the safety and security of Reform politicians and reform prominent figures. Up until that moment, we had been treated very differently to everybody else. For example, four days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I had nearly all of my security removed from me. We have been ignored. Our situation has been undervalued."
He added that he cannot say more now to avoid prejudicing the investigation, but expressed confidence in counter-terrorism police and said the information will come out later.
Police have yet to confirm any link between Widdecombe's murder and the alleged firebombing of Farage's home. At the time, police did not identify any suspects, and the investigation was closed as an attempted burglary. After the case was reopened, CTP London said it had identified a line of inquiry "which may have been relevant" but was "not identified and pursued by [counter-terrorism police] at the time".
The police watchdog is now investigating the conduct of a CTP London staff member over allegations that they "failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry".