What Farage isn’t telling you about crime...with The Bunker podcast
Our Westminster Editor, Zoe Grunewald, joined The Bunker to unpack Nigel Farage’s misleading crime claims and explore the real issues Reform UK ignores
Last week, I joined The Bunker podcast to discuss my recent piece on why Nigel Farage’s claims about crime don’t match the facts.
We talked about why the populist right likes to frame London as a crime hotspot —despite it having lower crime per capita than Birmingham or Manchester — and how Reform UK’s cherry-picking and wilful misinterpretation of data distracts from the real problems in our justice system.
As I wrote in the piece and explained on the pod, Farage zeroes in on migrant crime while ignoring the underlying socio-economic drivers of offending, court backlogs, violence against women and girls on a national scale, and blue-collar offences like fraud and financial crime.
Ultimately, the media has an important role to play here. It’s not enough to point out the discrepancies in Farage and his allies’ claims, we also need to interrogate the substance of Reform’s policies. How would they pay for their mass deportations of criminals and Nightingale prisons? How would they actually tackle sentencing problems, prison overcrowding or case backlogs? How would they reduce youth violence and break the link between poverty, addiction and crime?
Until Farage can offer credible, detailed answers to these questions, his claims should be met with healthy scepticism. The most revealing way to understand the real challenges facing this country is to focus on what Farage doesn’t talk about, and scrutinise what he does.
You can listen to my interview — “Will Farage's crime fear campaign decide the next election?” – on The Bunker podcast here. Do let me if you enjoyed it.
At The Lead we keep a watching brief on the activities of the far-right in the UK and beyond. From debunking the comments of Musk and Farage to exploring the seaside towns where the far-right have begun to surge. Help support our coverage in this area by considering a subscription to support The Lead’s coverage.