Woman Who Milkshaked Farage Avoids Jail Time

UPDATE Dec 17, 2024 6:21 PM CST

A woman who chucked a milkshake over Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage as he left a pub in England in June has avoided jail time. Victoria Thomas Bowen, 25, was given a 13-week suspended sentence after pleading guilty to assault, the BBC reports. She was ordered to pay Farage $190. "We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison," Farage, who was not an MP at the time of the milkshaking, complained in a post on X. Farage and party treasurer Nick Candy met Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, leading to speculation that Musk might fund the right-wing party, reports the Guardian.

Jun 4, 2024 4:51 PM CDT

It's election season in Britain and the milkshakes are flying again. A 25-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of assault Tuesday after Nigel Farage had a milkshake thrown over him on his first day of campaigning, Politico reports. Video shows the woman throwing a McDonald's milkshake over the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, formerly the Brexit Party, as he leaves a pub in Clacton, England. This isn't Farage's first campaign, or his first milkshaking: He had a banana and salted caramel milkshake thrown over him while campaigning in Newcastle in 2019.

Farage told Politico he was shaken by the "quite violent" incident. "If somebody chucks something and it hits you in the face, it could be anything, it is a bit scary," he said, noting that it doesn't happen to other party leaders. "You know why, they don't go out and meet hundreds of people and this is the risk of doing it," he said. The BBC reports that he later made light of the incident and posed with a tray of four milkshakes.

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The July 4 election was called almost two weeks ago but Farage didn't announce his candidacy until Monday. He had previously insisted that he wouldn't run. Polls suggest that the ruling Conservative Party will suffer a heavy defeat. On Tuesday, Farage drew parallels with Canada, where the country's Reform Party became more powerful after the Progressive Conservative Party was almost wiped out in the 1993 election. "Reform did a reverse takeover of the Conservative party, rebranded it and Stephen Harper—who was elected as a Reform MP—became the Canadian prime minister for 10 years," he told Good Morning Britain. (More Nigel Farage stories.)