A week ago, Donald Trump faced the latest attempt to snuff out his life when a 31-year-old teacher carrying guns and knives attempted to force his way into a Washington dinner.
Incredibly, for the last decade, the rate of unsuccessful assassination plots against the American president has been running at one a year.
They have varied in seriousness. Ranging from the assailant who, in 2017, stole and drove a forklift truck at the presidential cavalcade, right through to those attempts which have involved a loss of life, usually the gunman’s.
The most notorious was in 2024 when President Trump avoided death by a whisker in Butler, Pennsylvania. Others have now faded from collective memory.
Who now recalls the British national who attempted to steal a firearm from a police officer as Trump approached in Las Vegas in 2016?
There have been two attempts to poison the president with ricin, and at least one to shoot him on the golf course. That astonishing average - let me repeat - of one assassination attempt a year, for ten years, does not even include conspiracies by state actors, like Iran.
And it comes against a backdrop in the US of growing ambivalence about political violence. Earlier this month, an influential left-wing campaigner described the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, a father and 50-year-old CEO of the U.S.’s largest private health insurer, as a “social murder” which the American people “understand”.
But such amoral attitudes are not exclusively American. When the US conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was murdered last year, the online reaction here in the UK was something to behold.
On Bluesky - the ‘kind’ alternative to Twitter - there was no shortage of contributors who thought that Kirk should “Rest In Piss”.
The bile wasn’t just digital. It flourished in real life, too. The incoming president of the Oxford University Union, a young man who had recently debated with Charlie Kirk in person, seemed to celebrate his murder.
And elsewhere, in front of a crowd, the singer Bob Vylan (he of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ infamy) was recorded at one of his concerts, noting that “If you chat shit you will get banged [shot].”
It is easy to think Britain, a nation without easy access to firearms, is immune to such trends. But the murders of MPs David Amess and Jo Cox suggest otherwise.
Nigel Farage should not be campaigning in fear of his life | Getty Images
And then there is the case of Nigel Farage. Just as left-wing commentators in the US struggle to condemn attempts to murder their president, so left-wing comics in the UK have found it easy to make light of attacks against the Reform leader.
In 2019, after the first of two separate incidents in which milkshakes were thrown at Farage, the comedian Jo Brand went on BBC radio and said: ”I'm thinking, why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?”
Some people find it all too easy to dismiss attacks against Nigel Farage as light-hearted pranks. It’s only a milkshake! Lighten up! Where’s your sense of humour! But this ignores the shock someone feels when, out of the blue, an unknown liquid is being hurled into their face. It should go without saying that our elected MPs should not have to deal with this type of intimidation
Nigel Farage is, by his own admission, a divisive politician whose style of politics wins both friends and enemies. Yet where the leader of the party currently leading in the opinion polls is concerned, far too many of his detractors seem to think the normal rules of civilised politics don’t apply.
And the folly of the thing is this. More than any other person in British politics today (and I include the prime minister), Nigel Farage is a target for those who believe democracy can be subverted by violence.
And for every loon who genuinely would do physical harm to him, there are a hundred who are complicit. In the sense that they create the conditions online in which violence is normalised.
Nigel Farage rarely addresses these questions. His silence is based on professional advice that talking about personal security is best avoided, lest any operational details be given away.
But this week that changed.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the MP for Clacton described how protesters had attacked and “written off” his car - with him inside - and, on another occasion, how there had been an attempt to firebomb him from his home.
“It was,” he said, “an outright arson attempt. I wasn’t at home at the time, but when I came back and opened the door, I found the damage. Luckily, it had burned itself out in the porch, and we think maybe the perpetrators were disturbed in the act. The police were all over it. They did their best, but there are no suspects so far”.
The timing of the disclosure has raised eyebrows. The Guardian newspaper has been reporting that money donated to the Reform leader before the 2024 election was not properly declared.
Reform insists it was and, more importantly, was given to ensure Nigel Farage could afford the close, personal protection personnel who would keep him safe from harm while campaigning.
The money came from a donor who was actually with the Reform boss when he was hit by a milkshake in Newcastle in 2019.
Labour and the Conservatives have referred Nigel Farage to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, believing he has broken the rules by not declaring the money in his register of interests.
But the real scandal here is this. Why is the British State refusing to act on growing evidence (including this now publicly acknowledged arson attack) indicating Nigel Farage faces an acute level of personal jeopardy, higher than that confronted by any other front-line British politician?
Why, in fact, rather than increasing his level of taxpayer-funded protection, has it been dramatically reduced? Last year, it was revealed that Nigel Farage’s state-provided security detail had been cut by 75 per cent. Since then, he has been forced to beef up that security at his own expense.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, says the situation is actually worse than it seems. Because the government, while presiding over a cut in Nigel Farage’s safety, is also fomenting antagonism towards him.
Last year, Yusuf accused the prime minister of coordinating a "campaign of incitement to violence”. The Business Secretary Peter Kyle likened Farage to Jimmy Savile, while others accused him of racism and disliking Britain.
In comments that were later withdrawn, the then Foreign Secretary David Lammy suggested Farage had been a member of the Hitler Youth.
There will be those who say there’s nothing new in political violence. I remember reading the brilliant account of the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman, and being astonished by the level of violence present in
Regency politics. Being assaulted while campaigning was the norm, not the exception.
It’s also worth remembering, as America celebrates 250 years of independence from Britain, that the mother country was no stranger to political assassinations.
Prime Minister Spencer Percival was gunned down in London long before Abraham Lincoln met the same fate in Washington.
And nobody should forget that Margaret Thatcher came very close to becoming the second Prime Minister to be murdered in office, when the IRA narrowly missed her with a bomb in Brighton.
But just because political violence has a long and inglorious history does not mean we should accept it as a reality now and forever.
Nigel Farage has shown huge bravery in continuing in politics even after surviving a near-fatal plane crash and cancer.
He should not have to worry that a stranger who approaches him on the campaign trail might be the last face he sees.