Police Lectured About Farage in Islamophobia Talk

Police officers were lectured about Nigel Farage in a publicly funded talk about Islamophobia, with the Reform leader’s doubts about Muslims’ ability to subscribe to British values compared to a racially aggravated offence. The Telegraph has the story.

Officers at a hate crime conference attended training sessions that compared the Reform UK leader’s opinions, specifically his doubts about young Muslims’ ability to subscribe to British values, to a racially aggravated offence.

The North Yorkshire Police officers were asked to consider the “harm” done by Farage, and then told that the politician would be “locked up” if he were similarly critical of Jewish people.

The lecture was part of a training programme titled Project Unity, which the Telegraph understands has also been presented to students, council staff and civil servants responsible for the counter-extremism Prevent programme.

It also took issue with criticism of pro-Palestine “hate marches” levelled by “people like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick” – both Reform MPs – and concerns about Muslim integration raised by Matthew Goodwin, a former Reform Parliamentary candidate.

Police have been repeatedly criticised for failing to adopt a sufficiently robust stance on Islamism and antisemitic abuse.

Last week, Policy Exchange, a Right-wing think tank, revealed that the National Association of Muslim Police had published papers defending Hamas and describing terms such as “Islamist” as Islamophobic.

The Project Unity training was delivered by Abbas Najib, a former police officer and now the Chief Executive of Better Communities Bradford, a charity.

Since 2019, the charity has received £490,000 in public funding from the National Lottery Communities Fund, including a £35,000 grant to roll out Project Unity, which covers training sessions that include “media and political narratives” and “myths and misconceptions about Islam”.

In 2025, the latter session was delivered for free to North Yorkshire Police officers at the York and North Yorkshire Hate Crime Conference.

Attendees were shown a 2024 interview with Farage in which he warned that “growing numbers of people do not subscribe to British values”, going on to say that this cohort included Muslims and attendees of pro-Palestine marches in London.

The Reform leader then cited a survey published by the Henry Jackson Society that found 46% of British Muslims supported Hamas.

After that, attendees were asked to “think about the relationship” between Farage’s statements and a hate crime offence that took place in 2024. They were shown footage of a man racially abusing a Muslim bus driver.

They were then told to “draw your own conclusions” about the Reform leader, and asked to “think about whether this commentary has any influence on something like this”.

Najib said to the audience: “Ask yourself, who is going to get into trouble between those two gentlemen? And who did the most harm?”

Worth reading in full.