Nigel Farage could be about to face a reckoning in places like Barnsley for Brexit failures - Jayne Dowle

But that was then. He should take nothing for granted. Whilst the keyboard warriors quickly took up their positions – I stopped counting who was in favour of the battle bus attack and who against when comments on one local social media website passed 400-odd – what stands out is that not all of the commentators were appalled at what had happened.

If Farage thinks that everyone in Barnsley who voted in favour of Brexit eight long years ago - with the anniversary of the vote coming up on June 23 - is happy with the way things have turned out, he’s got another thing coming, as we say round here.

He has his fans, admittedly and they have a right to their opinion. Many people, across the UK, see Farage as a maverick, a challenger to the Westminster status quo. But I wonder how many former supporters have become disenchanted by the promises Brexit has broken.

Farage’s alleged assailant, it turns out, isn’t even from my home-town. A Chesterfield man, Josh Greally, 28, of Damsbrook Drive in Clowne, has been charged with using threatening, abusive, insulting words and behaviour with intent to cause fear or provoke unlawful violence.

He has been released on bail and will appear before Barnsley Magistrates’ Court on June 26. What Mr Greally was doing in Barnsley remains to be seen, but it’s too late. Barnsley has hit the headlines once again. But this time, is it really for all the wrong reasons? Has this incident opened up a few home truths?

Forgive me if I missed the announcement, but I had no idea Farage was even coming to see us. I spotted nothing on social media, nor heard any rumours on the local grapevine, in stark contrast to the last time he made a well-heralded public appearance in Barnsley, during the 2019 General Election campaign.

Back then, he visited Highstone Road Working Men’s Club in Worsbrough Common to lead a rally and drew an estimated crowd of 250 people, who were told that “the Labour party had betrayed communities like this”.

I stood outside quietly in the November drizzle to watch him arrive, to think about the Depression years of the 1920s and 1930s and the far-right movements across Europe, and witness this moment in history.

My dad’s family are from Worsbrough Common, most of them were members of this club. I’ve been on many club trips and to Christmas parties as a child. I can’t imagine what my late grandad, a miner all his working life, would have made of the son of a stockbroker from Kent rocking up with a load of heavies and a right-wing agenda, but I don’t think he would have been overly impressed.

Swap out the word ‘Labour’ for ‘Brexit’ and it doesn’t take a political strategist to work out that this is a major cause of the anger Farage faced on his return visit to Barnsley.

Perhaps history will not record whether the mud-slinging (it’s reported that the ‘weapons’ included objects from a nearby construction site) was part of a premeditated attack or a random act.

And whilst violence is never the answer - however frustrating politics can be - this should send a warning shot across the bows of Reform UK. As should the more peaceful protesters who met Farage with banners proclaiming ‘Immigrants Are Welcome’ and something alliterative to do with ‘F’ too rude to repeat here.

Speaking afterwards at a rally in Great Yarmouth, he described what had happened earlier as “mob violence”, referring also to the recent incident in Clacton involving a hurled milkshake, and vowed not to “surrender to the mob” and to carry on campaigning, adding that “our democratic process is under threat”.

Apart from inexplicably blaming “young men and women either at or freshly out of our university system” for the protest, he hits a sound note here actually. As we have learned with the killings of MPs Jo Cox in Batley and Spen in June 2016 and Sir David Amess in Southend five years later, sadly, those who wish to serve put their lives on the line.

Countless other politicians, many of whom choose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, have been under threat of violence from constituents, either in their surgeries or through malevolent letters, emails and social media hounding.