WHATEVER you think of Nigel Farage, it is absolutely wrong that he should have things thrown at him.

He was milkshaked in Clacton last week and this week he had wet cement and a cup lobbed at him as he toured on his bus in Barnsley.

We need our politicians to live in the real world, to understand the problems that real people face – and whereas Rishi Sunak might regard not having a subscription to Sky TV as a hardship many people are facing far worse deprivations in that real world due to the cost of living crisis.

It is only by getting out and about so that they hear and see the conditions of so many people’s lives that our politicians learn the true state of the country.

If they are going to be surrounded by a bubble of security – and Mr Farage has been offered extra support by the Home Office – they are never going to see the real world or come face-to-face with real people.

It must be terrifying to be milkshaked, even though some people find it funny. Mr Farage would not have known what was flying towards him, and he must have feared it was acid or a substance to cause him harm. And with good reason: two MPs in recent years have been murdered.

It is true that the politicians themselves have to reduce the temperature of the campaign. Our politics are becoming increasingly presidential and so the temptation grows for Mr Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer is to go ever harder in a personal assault on their opponent.

But as respect dies, the temperature of the campaign rises and creates a vicious atmosphere in which physical attacks take place.

Yet an assault on Mr Farage is an assault on free speech which is an attack on democracy and on our nation’s values.