Nigel Farage's Edinburgh humiliation: Protesters chant 'scum!' at Ukip leader

By Alex Stevenson

Ukip leader Nigel Farage was forced to retreat into a police van after encountering angry protesters in Edinburgh.



Farage found himself facing a barrage of abuse while conducting a press conference in the Canon's Gait pub in the Scottish capital yesterday.



"He's a scumbag, he needs to go back to London," one angry local observed. Others accused Farage of being "elitist" and "homophobic".



Farage finally took umbrage when one pub-goer called him "a hybrid Conservative BNP in a bloody suit".



He replied: "That's a silly comment." The local responded: "No it's not." Farage rebutted by expanding on his earlier observation, saying: "That's a really silly comment."



He was then told he was "not wanted in Scotland at all" before attempting to leave via a taxi. When that failed he was eventually rescued by the police.



Anti-fascist protesters waiting for him chanted "scum" repeatedly and banged on the door of the van before it drove off.



The incident has obviously upset Farage, who appeared on BBC Scotland this morning to attack those who had ruined his press conference at greater length.



"If this is the face of Scottish nationalism, it's a pretty ugly nation," he declared. "The anger, the hatred, the shouting, the snarling, the swearing was all linked in to a desire for the Union Jack to be burnt."



He called on Scottish first minister Alex Salmond to condemn his treatment and



The protest appears to have been organised by Radical Independence, a grassroots campaign organisation which called an "emergency protest" outside the pub at 17:30 yesterday.



Its Twitter account retweeted numerous examples of approval for the protest action.