The ‘lenient’ sentence given to Nigel Farage’s milkshake assailant is a propaganda gift

It is time for liberals to accept that, sometimes, there is such a thing as ‘two-tier justice’, says John Rentoul

During this year’s election campaign, Victoria Thomas Bowen threw a banana milkshake at Nigel Farage, a parliamentary candidate, for which she received a suspended sentence. Five years ago, John Murphy hit Jeremy Corbyn, the then-Labour leader, with an egg, and was given a 28-day prison term.

When Farage criticises Bowen’s sentence as “two-tier justice”, it is hard to disagree.

It very much looks like lenient treatment for someone who told police officers that she opposed Farage’s “political views”, and a ton of bricks for a Leave voter who shouted “Respect the vote!” as he hit Corbyn, at a time when parliament was deadlocked over Brexit.

Throwing food at politicians seems silly, but it should be taken seriously. It is assault, and ought to be punished severely, as a deterrent. It was all very well for Harold Wilson to laugh off an egg thrown at him in 1970, saying: “If the Tories get in, in five years, no one will be able to afford to buy an egg.”

But it is no joke. The politician being attacked doesn’t know it is “only” a milkshake, or an egg, or a condom filled with purple flour, when they are on the receiving end of it. Peter Mandelson did know that it was green custard when Leila Deen, a climate protester, threw it over him in 2009, because she told him just before she did it. But it is still harassment and a form of violence, and it should not be tolerated.

Professor Philip Cowley reports the findings of a survey that finds that the vast majority of people think it is wrong to abuse MPs, but comments: “There may only be 2 per cent who think it is OK to visit an office and make physical threats, but that’s still more than 1,500 people per constituency.”

As it happens, I think the punishment handed down to Bowen was about right. This is mainly because I am allergic to sending people to prison. I don’t think any benefit would be obtained by putting Bowen behind bars at vast expense to me, the taxpayer, especially when the prisons are already letting out people who are more of a danger to society than she.

I think the judge was right to make her pay £771.50 in costs and compensation, and to sentence her to 120 hours of unpaid work and to 12 days of “rehabilitation activity requirement”.

What seems to me to be two-tier justice was the harsh sentence handed down to Murphy, Corbyn’s assailant, in 2019. He, too, should have been made to pay, in money and time, rather than forcing the public to pay for a pointless custodial sentence.

Indeed, we may be in a system of three-tier justice, in which people such as Deen, Mandelson’s assailant, are let off altogether. The police chose to take no action.

Similarly, no action was taken against Craig Evans, the farm worker who broke an egg on the side of John Prescott’s head in the 2001 election campaign. That scuffle was complicated, legally, by Prescott’s left-handed punch in retaliation, but in my view, Evans should have been taken to the cleaners for assault; Prescott was clearly acting in self-defence. And I think Evans was wrong to say last month when Prescott died that he had “no regrets”. He really should have.

So, yes, we have a problem of inconsistent justice in this country. But it is not quite the inconsistency that Farage decries. His assailant was treated with the severity that justice demands. But what liberals ought to accept is that Murphy, Corbyn’s attacker, was treated with disproportionate harshness. It may not have been because he was a Brexiteer, but that is the unfortunate impression given.

That is why Bowen’s suspended sentence looks bad. The contrast with Murphy’s jail term is a propaganda gift to Farage. Anyone who disagrees with Farage’s politics has to start by accepting that he has a point – and by condemning the two-tier justice handed out to Corbyn’s assailant five years ago.