The Reform leader tried to dismiss Green MP Hannah Spencer’s concerns with a jibe about the Green Party’s stance on drug legalisation
Nigel Farage’s attempt at mocking Green MP Hannah Spencer’s concerns about MPs drinking between votes and smelling of alcohol backfired.
In an interview with PoliticsJoe, Spencer, the new Green MP for Gorton and Denton, said she was “uneasy” about the drinking culture in Parliament.
Spencer said: “You can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes”.
“There’s a room where I walk past and I doubled back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink,” she explained.
Spencer added that she couldn’t imagine a cleaner or someone in a bank having a few drinks and going back to work “a bit smelling of alcohol”.
Farage dismissed Spencer’s concerns, by defending MPs having “an afternoon pint”, and attacking the Green Party’s policy on drugs.
The Green Party says it takes a public health approach to drug policy, and wants to end criminalisation of drugs and replace it with a system of legal regulation.
In a post on X, Farage said: “The Greens are happy to legalise heroin and crack, but now we learn they think an afternoon pint is a step too far. Make it make sense.”
Online his comment sparked criticism, with people pointing out that drinking at work is inappropriate.
One X user wrote: “Because one is an evidence-led approach to public health and the other is being intoxicated at work? They’re two different things?”.
Another said: “No-one should be drinking at work especially if they are being funded by the taxpayer to run the country.”
Another person who commented on his post pointed out that back in 2014, when Farage was leader of UKIP, he said drugs should be legalised and that the war against them was lost “many, many years ago”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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