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Can you imagine the furore if I, as leader of Reform UK, shared a social media post containing a threat to kill the leader of the Labour, Conservative or Green parties?

And can you imagine how much worse that furore would be if I did such a thing less than three weeks after a senior politician from those parties had been brutally murdered?

I know for sure that I would be arrested for incitement. I would be drummed out of political life to loud media condemnations and parliamentary demands to prostrate myself in front of the Speaker and make a grovelling apology.

So what happened when Green Party leader Zack Polanski shared a post on Monday that showed a man standing next to a guillotine, along with the disgusting phrase: 'We're only making plans for Nigel'?

Nothing.

When we highlighted this outrageous post, Polanski quietly took it down.

No apology, no knock on the door, no wider condemnations, nothing to see here, move along please.

Well, after the recent murder of my dear friend and colleague Ann Widdecombe, that simply isn't good enough.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski shared a post on Monday of a T-shirt depicting a man standing next to a guillotine, with the phrase: 'We're only making plans for Nigel'?

After the recent murder of my dear friend and colleague Ann Widdecombe, the response simply isn't good enough, writes Nigel Farage

That's why I have reported Polanski to the Metropolitan Police and to the London Assembly, where he is an elected member. Because when it comes to political double standards and the two-tier policing of our public life, enough is enough.

For those who haven't seen it, the offending Instagram post, shared by Polanski to his 700,000 followers, featured a bearded Green activist in a rainbow cap, wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with that chilling image and caption. The smug-looking beardie was making a V-for-victory sign at the camera.

This was one of a series of posts that Polanski had shared from a Green conference, which was reportedly billed as 'a day of love, joy, community'. Only in the warped world of the Leftie '#BeKind' brigade would 'love, joy, community' include hatred and violence against political opponents.

Some cynical commentators have accused us of 'overreacting'.

Well, let me remind them of just what happened earlier this month.

Ann, our party spokesman for immigration and justice, was killed in the most despicable circumstances in her own home in Devon.

The local police initially tried to assure me that her death was a random 'burglary gone wrong'.

From the first, I suspected that was nonsense.

Ann's unspeakable murder should have drawn a line in the sand for everyone in British politics. It was a stark warning of the terrible consequences of stoking hatred against politicians of all stripes, or against anyone who questions the establishment parties' consensus on issues such as mass migration. Anyone who truly believes in our democracy should have taken that dire warning to heart.

Instead, we have witnessed an establishment attempt to play down and divert attention from Ann's murder.

First came the misplaced official warnings from Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and police chiefs that we should not 'speculate' about motive (all while they were speculating wildly about there being 'nothing to suggest it was politically motivated').

Then, just a couple of days after Ann's murder, came the bizarre effort to invent a Right-wing terror threat against a Muslim festival in Suffolk, with news of 12 'arrests' plastered across the BBC and Ms Mahmood declaring that the police had 'undoubtedly saved lives'.

The only problem was that this terror threat did not actually exist.

As the Daily Mail reported in its excellent coverage last weekend, it was 'the far-Right plot that never was'.

Was this frankly bonkers episode another blunder by the authorities? Or was the fantasy 'anti-Muslim terror threat' part of a scheme to divert attention from the real threat to Right-of-centre public figures?

Now, less than three weeks after Ann's murder, we have witnessed the grisly spectacle of a party leader posting about how funny it would be to guillotine the leader of the party she supported. Sorry but I'm not laughing.

The offending Instagram post, shared by Polanski to his 700,000 followers, featured a Green activist in a rainbow cap, wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the chilling image

In recent years I have had everything from milkshakes to stones thrown at me, been hit over the head with placards and seen my home attacked, says Farage

As Lord Walney, the Government's former adviser on political violence, rightly said, for Polanski to have shared 'material implying the assassination of another politician' would be 'sickening and unacceptable at any time'. But it is 'even more serious in the present environment, in which a senior Reform member has been brutally killed'.

Lord Walney warned there must be 'serious consequences' for what Polanski has done. Quite so.

Long before any of this, I needed more security than anyone in British politics. Between February this year and July 13, Reform recorded a total of 1,577 threats against me, averaging over 300 per month – more than ten every day. We judge 597 of those to be explicit death threats.

And, sadly, it's more than mere words. In recent years I have had everything from milkshakes to stones thrown at me, been hit over the head with placards, seen my home attacked. And all the while, hostile media commentators and political opponents have sought to stir up hatred by slandering me and Reform as 'fascists' and 'racists' – effectively labelling us, in the eyes of the far-Left, as legitimate targets.

Nobody else in British political life has to put up with this. That is why I have needed personal security since 2013. The Home Office refused to help for years and last year cut the funding it offered me.

I have to pay for private security – and now I also fund protection for my family, too.

Anyone wondering about the £5million gift I received from a friend, which has been splashed across countless headlines recently, might consider the costs of my private security. After the murder of dear Ann, I can think of five million reasons for accepting that help.

But of course it's not just about me – and I want to stress that this is not a party-political issue. It is sad that our democracy should have come to this but I have committed a future Reform UK government to providing public protection for all MPs and political leaders judged to need it – including the leader of the Green Party.

No thanks – needless to say – from Polanski.

Instead, if anything, the Left has reacted to recent events by doubling down on their incitements against us.

After an Islamist terrorist mowed down dozens of innocent people at the Berlin Pride parade at the weekend, Labour MP Kate Osborne tried to blame his sickening attack on... Reform UK and GB News. She announced bizarrely that we were part of an 'escalation of hate' across Europe, acting as a 'catalyst for real-world physical violence'.

And what does Ms Osborne have to say about the Green Party leader sharing a hateful image calling for me to be murdered? Nothing at all.

Polanski must face the consequences of his appalling decisions. Political violence is real. It is serious. It needs dealing with.