The Nowak murder has lit a match under British politics. This is how we got here

The Nowak murder has lit a match under British politics. This is how we got here

2 hours ago

Laura KuenssbergSunday with Laura Kuenssberg

Henry Nowak's mum and dad were being shown round the Victorian maze that is the Houses of Parliament when they heard politicians talking about their 18-year-old son's murder.

They were being taken on a tour of the labyrinthine building in between meetings with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and their appointment at Downing Street with the prime minister. They'd climbed the steep steps to the crammed public gallery to take a peek at the Commons Chamber when, by chance, the leader of the Commons, Alan Campbell, and his opposite number, Jesse Norman, both paid tribute to their son, and the dignity of the family.

In a terrible week of grief, I'm told they were touched to hear their son's death being acknowledged calmly in the country's parliament.

The same would not apply to the ugly conversations of the day before. The family were, mercifully perhaps, not present to hear the vicious argument with shouts of "condemn it", cries of "shame", and jeers and boos on Wednesday.

MPs had rounded on Reform leader Nigel Farage as he repeated his claim that "growing millions" in the UK believe we live under what he has long described as "two-tier policing" – that's the suggestion that police are more lenient towards ethnic minorities than white people for fear of causing racial tensions or being accused of prejudice. And he warned that the anger seen "spilling out" in Southampton was "in danger of getting considerably worse" if the public lose trust in the police.

But the Hampshire Conservative police commissioner, Donna Jones, who has been helping support Nowak's parents, told me: "Farage's comments on Wednesday were irresponsible and will lead to more division on Britain's streets – the Nowaks had called for calm reflection and reiterated that to me on Friday, and asked me to represent that view".

Now,  this weekend, to the horror of Downing Street, even the vice president of the United States has piled in. A torrid political argument is raging, one that's gone way beyond the tragedy of one family – it's a new fault line in British politics, involving the Trump administration too.

Henry Nowak case: What happened and why has it caused national outrage?

Claims of "two-tier" policing, which conveniently for the prime minister's critics, can be made into the damning rhyming jibe of "two-tier Keir", first started to circulate in mainstream politics in the summer of 2024. Although claims of a "two-tier" system had been made by the convicted far-right activist Stephen Yaxley Lennon (Tommy Robinson) many years before.

But two years ago, there were violent protests in towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland after fatal stabbings at a children's dance class in Southport on 29 July. Unrest had been stirred by misinformation on social media that the suspect was an illegal migrant.  It was not until 1 August that the identity of the girls' killer was made public.

Public anger at the girls' deaths, and the digital howlround about what had happened, led to clashes with police, attacks on mosques and asylum hotels. There were more than 1,800 arrests, and suspects were fast-tracked through the courts.

The new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, wanted to stamp his authority, and fast. But accusations started to emerge that the summer rioters, mainly white, were being treated more harshly than protestors had been at other recent demonstrations. The optics of other offenders being released early because of prison overcrowding was an uncomfortable contrast too.

Claims of an unfair approach were strongly rejected by the police and later, an independent committee of MPs found there was no evidence to back up the "two-tier" allegation – the response had been strong and swift because the disorder was serious, they reported. But the idea had gained traction, not least because the prime minister's unflattering nickname had been used online by Elon Musk - yes, the world's richest man, who just happens to own one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

Fast forward to the start of 2025, when long-held fears about gangs of South Asian or British Pakistani men abusing young girls in British towns, as happened in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, reared their heads. Oldham Council's request for another inquiry into what became known as "grooming gangs" had been turned down.

When that was reported, opposition politicians started to push the prime minister for a national inquiry. And Elon Musk piled in again with extraordinary accusations against the prime minister and one of his ministers, Jess Phillips, but the nickname of "two-tier Keir" spiked again.

Unlike the allegations that 2024 rioters had been overly harshly treated because they were white, which were not proven, there had been evidence for years that investigations into grooming gangs of mainly Pakistani men were affected by concerns over race.

Dame Louise Casey, who led the inquiry into what happened in Rotherham, and later, looked at the situation across the country, even revealed that in one file she'd seen the word "Pakistani" tippexed over, suggesting that "do-gooders" had covered up the identify of abusers out of fear of stirring up racism.

It is broadly acknowledged now, across the political spectrum, that girls were terribly let down, in part because the authorities were worried about stirring up community tensions. And despite his own record of challenging and convicting those abusers as the director of public prosecutions, that row gave Keir Starmer's critics another chance to make the argument there the authorities do not treat everyone equally, fuelling the claims of "two-tier Keir".

But let's set aside the contested claims of the 2024 protests and the shame of grooming gangs scandal, and take a look at the overall picture. Even a glance at statistics suggests that, overall, ethnic minorities fair overwhelmingly worse in the police and justice system.

Black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and five times more likely to be subjected to the use of force. There is a long, shameful and well-documented record of racism in the police, from the Stephen Lawrence murder back in the 1990s to an undercover Panorama last year that revealed those attitudes on display in a London police station even now.

There is a genuine political debate about whether recent efforts to right those wrongs in the police have gone too far. Ministers have acknowledged already that guidance to forces is clunky and ought to be reviewed. But they also say there is a history of racism in policing that needs to be recognised. The Conservatives have called for an "independent rapid review" into the circumstances surrounding Nowak's death. And the shadow home secretary Chris Philp has said: "Two-tier policing is real. It is hardcoded into policy documents, recruitment, and training".

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called the killing "an evil murder made so much worse by the police response" but said we must avoid attempts to politicise the death and "divide our country".

Some officers have reported pressure to change their conduct out of the fear of allegations of racism, as my colleague Sima Kotecha has been reporting. But that does not mean it is accurate to make bold claims that the whole system is definitively stacked against white people. And Farage, now aided by the White House, has been using the occasion to make a wider claim about our overall culture, that he believes the rights of ethnic minorities are being protected over whites. In his words: "We're living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities."

JD Vance even claims that Nowak's death was a result of a "mass invasion" of migrants, making dramatic comments about the decline of European civilisations, which Farage has reshared online. We don't know if Vance doesn't care, or isn't aware, that Nowak's killer was born in Britain. Nor do we know if he's aware that by crashing into the political debate, he has done precisely what Nowak's family did not want.

In the specific tragedy of the Nowak case, there is no way of knowing yet exactly why the police behaved as they did. What led the officers on the ground to arrest and handcuff him as he lay bleeding on the ground? Why did they ignore his appeals that he couldn't breathe? Did they not question Digwa sufficiently because of fears over race?

Before there are answers to those fundamental questions, can any politician use the case to "prove" one thing or another about policing, let alone to come to firm conclusions about the culture of the UK in 2026?

What is clear is that Nowak's family did not want their son's death to provoke an angry conversation about race, or divide the country. They do want answers and accountability for the police's action. They want Digwa's 21-year sentence to be reviewed. And they want the law changed so that large Sikh ceremonial knives are not exempt from the rules on carrying weapons.

They are pressing that case with senior politicians, and have met the prime minister and Kemi Badenoch. They've also received a letter of condolence from Sir Ed Davey. As I write, despite his very public mentions of the case,  the family has still not had any direct contact with Nigel Farage.

There is, of course, an important conversation to be had about modern policing. There is a serious debate to be had about whether fears of causing offence or being accused of prejudice alters behaviour, particularly in the public services on which we all rely.

But Reform is overtly using this case aggressively to make their wider arguments about the country, safe in the knowledge that while other politicians, and some of the public, find their arguments repellent and wrong headed, some of their supporters are on side.

Polling from the fractious summer of 2024 for the research group More In Common suggested that only 18% of voters overall believed the police treat ethnic minorities more favourably than white people. But among Reform voters, that number jumped to 47. This is a message that appeals to Farage's base, and he's not afraid to use it.

But a horrendous tragedy for one family is being used by some politicians to stir online outrage, and provoke a debate about race. A textbook example of politics in the 2020s – a terrible event on the streets of Southampton – now an angry transatlantic argument about race.

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