If the hard right cares so much about women, why do they keep abusing them?

At the 2026 Reform UK Party Conference, during Nigel Farage’s speech, a young woman did something that is a standard part of conference season in Britain: she interrupted a politician to protest.

We all remember someone throwing glitter over Keir Starmer, or handing Theresa May a P45. They got booed by the crowd and were calmly escorted from the building.

But at the conference of a party that prides itself on offending “snowflakes” and regularly rages about free speech, things took a more sinister turn. I spoke to Issy Maple, a journalist from The New Arab, who witnessed what happened.

“The first person who protested was a woman who started shouting about the £5m, and instantly people from all around the audience started screaming, whilst Farage chanted ‘boring’,” she told me. “That was very shocking to see. I found the mob mentality quite unsettling.”

Then another protester, this time a climate activist, stood up and shouted out.

And she was assaulted by members of the audience.

“It was a really difficult thing to witness. There was a man behind her with a crutch hitting her, and an old woman next to her pulling her hair. People were grabbing her in a way I don’t believe for a second they’d have done if it were a man.

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“One thing that hasn’t been reported on that I noticed is that a guy in front of me was screaming ‘fuck off you bitch’, over and over again. And I can’t be sure, but I think I heard someone say, ‘die bitch’, too.”

The footage of the assault quickly went viral, and I think I speak for most sane people when I say it is difficult to watch. The crowd sets upon her in a way that is genuinely rabid. She is grabbed, kicked and has her hair pulled and she later revealed her clothes were torn.

There is a painfully on-the-nose metaphor in the image of a young person trying to fight for her future being beaten down by pensioners with walking sticks. 

But let’s put that to one side – a young woman was assaulted by a mob. Was the response from Reform one of horror, condemnation or even basic concern?

When Robert Jenrick was asked about the footage, he responded: “Oh, boohoo.” And, predictably, online, it wasn’t difficult to find supporters arguing that she deserved worse and calling her a stupid whore.

Isn’t it interesting that this is the very party that, along with so much of the far right, frequently justifies its extreme anti-immigration rhetoric by telling us it is all about “protecting our women and girls”?

Reform UK and figures such as Tommy Robinson have spent years telling us that we are in grave danger: that foreign men, migrants and Muslims pose an existential threat to British women.

But time and time again, when women are actually assaulted, harassed or threatened in their own political circles, their supposed concern for women’s safety seems to disappear.

James McMurdock was elected as a Reform MP in 2024 despite a conviction for assaulting an ex-girlfriend, and when the conviction emerged, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice defended him, calling it a “mistake”.

And then there is the wider far right; need we talk about Tommy Robinson and his supporters verbally abusing female journalists? Need we talk about the way women who challenge them are routinely called slags, whores, bitches and worse? Need we talk about the fact that the people who spend so much time telling us they are standing up for women seem to have an extraordinarily low opinion of women who dare to disagree with them?

I think we’d be here all day.

On Sunday, more than 200 protesters gathered around Portsmouth to try to prevent migrants rescued from the Channel from being brought ashore. The protest was led by Danny Thomas, an associate of Tommy Robinson, who told his fellow demonstrators “this isn’t about me, or you, it’s about every woman and girl in Britain and making them feel safe.”

The defence of “our women” has long been used to justify racial hatred. You can see it throughout history: the supposed protection of white women was weaponised in the American Jim Crow South to justify the lynching and murder of Black men. 

And let me be clear here: I do think people have every right to be horrified when they hear reports of foreign nationals assaulting or murdering people, or the horrific accounts of grooming gangs. I think the left has made serious mistakes in the past by being so frightened of fuelling racism that it sometimes failed to properly acknowledge genuine concerns about sexual violence.

But let’s not pretend that the primary reason the hard right wants closed borders and mass deportations is because they care oh-so-deeply about women’s rights.

During the 2024 summer riots, 41% of those arrested had previously been the subject of a domestic abuse report. The Belfast riots in June saw masked men torching the houses of suspected immigrants  – regardless of whether those immigrants happened to be women or children. 

Where was the great mobilisation from these vigilante groups around Sarah Everard, or the same obsessive concern about domestic abuse? Look at the extraordinary support that has surrounded Russell Brand despite the sexual assault and rape allegations against him. 

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The hypocrisy of the far right, on this issue, is hardly surprising – especially when you consider just how hypocritical they are about pretty much everything else.

But my message here is particularly to the right-wing women who have bought into this, women like Sarah Pochin, who invoke “the safety of women and girls” to justify racism and anti-immigration politics.

Right-wing movements have always had a fantasy of a particular kind of woman who will be exalted: the respectable, patriotic, knows-her-place woman. There is a promise that if you stand with them, you will be one of the women they protect.

But you won’t.

The person who protested at the Reform conference was a young, white, British woman. If she had been attacked by a migrant the previous day, they’d have been holding a vigil for her at the Reform party conference. But because she exercised her right to free speech and challenged them, she was allowed to be mauled by a mob.

The moment you become inconvenient, you are no longer one of the women they want to “protect”. You are simply another woman they are willing, and ready, to beat down.