Nigel Farage has been dubbed a “Putin-loving free speech imposter and Trump sycophant” by a US congressman, who launched a savage takedown of the Reform leader before he was set to give evidence in Washington DC.
Jamie Raskin urged voters in Britain to “think twice” before voting for Mr Farage, accusing him of only protecting free speech he agrees with.
His comments came as Mr Farage, who has been heavily critical of free speech in the UK, with claims police are too heavy-handed with their arrests of people accused of hate speech, prepared to give evidence on the subject to the US House Judiciary Committee.
Mr Raskin, a member of the Democratic Party, said: “To the people of the UK who think this Putin-loving free speech imposter and Trump sycophant will protect freedom in your country, come on over to America and see what Trump and MAGA are doing to destroy our freedom, to kidnap college students off the street, to ban books from our libraries, militarise our police and unleash them against our communities, take over our universities, wreck our professional civil service and turn the government into a money making machine for Trump and his family”.
“You might think twice before you let Mr Farage ‘make Britain great again’.”
Giving evidence later in the session, Mr Farage hit back, saying: “You can say what you like, I don’t care.”
In his stinging attack, Mr Raskin argued that US President Donald Trump and Mr Farage “both claim they’re protectors of free speech, but they only want to protect speech they agree with”.
“He [Mr Farage] complains that racist threats against immigrants are not protected free speech, while he proposes to strip migrants, tourists and perhaps even visiting American congresspeople of any free speech rights at all.
“I had my own close encounter with that when Mr Farage and his team presented for more than an hour in a conversation we had about free speech. And after three minutes of talking, he cut me off and terminated the meeting because he didn’t like what I was saying.
“That’s the kind of free speech he’s committed to”, Mr Raskin said.
Mr Farage has proposed replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights – applying only to British citizens and those who have a legal right to live in the UK.
Mr Raskin argued that while there is a free speech crisis in America, “there’s no free speech crisis in Britain”.
He pointed out that “no one has stopped Mr Farage from parroting Putin’s absurd talking points”, a reference to the MP’s previous suggestion that Nato provoked the war in Ukraine, as well as pointing out that Sir Keir Starmer has not shut down news organisation GB News, where Mr Farage has his own show, which is critical of the government.
Giving evidence to the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, the Reform UK leader said: “I’m delighted to be acquainted with the charming Mr Raskin – delightful testimony you gave me earlier on with your speech.
“But hey, that’s fine. You can say what you like, I don’t care, because that’s what free speech is. In a sense, this has all been going wrong now for a couple of decades.”
Despite pitching themselves as champions of free speech, Reform UK has been criticised for impinging upon media freedom after the leader of a Reform council barred a local newspaper and website from interacting with the authority.
The ban imposed by Nottinghamshire County Council came after Nottinghamshire Live published a series of stories which council leader Mick Barton claimed “consistently misrepresented” the party.
Giving evidence, Mr Farage said he wanted to bring Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers in the aftermath of the Southport murders last year, to Washington as “living proof of what can go wrong” with free speech, as well as sensationally comparing Britain to North Korea.
“It doesn’t give me any great joy to be sitting in America and describing the really awful authoritarian situation that we have now sunk into”, he said.
He also raised the arrest of Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan for his comments on social media about transgender people, claiming that US tech chiefs could face arrest when entering the UK.
He said: “He [Linehan] put out some tweets months ago when he was in Arizona, and months later, he arrives at Heathrow Airport to be met by five armed police.
“This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow that has said things online that the British government and British police don’t like. It is a potentially big threat to tech bosses, to many, many others.”
Mr Farage also warned that the UK’s Online Safety Act “will damage trade between our countries, threaten free speech across the West because of the knock-on rollout effects of this legislation from us or from the European Union”.
The Online Safety Act came into effect this year, providing a new set of laws that protect children and adults online from harmful content.
The Act has given providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce the risk that their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.
