Our ‘pure cold rage’ should be at Farage and Robinson

None of that justifies what happened on Tuesday – inflammatory claims made for political effect, followed by an energised mob attacking police on the streets of Southampton.

Even just watching the clip of Henry’s death is enough to see that what happened was a mistake, a wrong decision taken in a confused moment. Within about a minute, one officer noticed Nowak’s pupils were unresponsive – a sign of serious injury. Almost immediately afterwards, the officer who had seemed so indifferent earlier is performing CPR on Nowak, fighting desperately to save a young man’s life.

Anyone wanting to know the truth of the incident can easily find it out. The sentencing remarks of the Crown Court judge set everything out clearly. Henry, walking home, had run into Vickrum Digwa by chance. An ill-judged remark – Nowak asked Digwa if he was a “bad man” – rapidly and needlessly escalated. Digwa stabbed Nowak multiple times, then filmed him as he tried to scramble away from his attacker.

By the time the police arrived, they were presented with a very confused scene. Digwa and his brother were claiming Digwa had been the victim of a racist attack, and were drawing the officers’ attention to themselves to set out that version of events. Digwa’s mother had removed the large knife used in the attack from the scene. It was dark, and Nowak was wearing dark clothes.

Police officers often see arrestees falsely claim injury. There was no weapon at the scene. Nowak’s worst injuries were internal, as was most of his bleeding. 

They looked for a stab wound and missed it. In a confused scene, being made deliberately more confusing by the malicious actions of Digwa and his family, police briefly got it wrong.

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As it happened, a medical expert confirmed that the brief delay in treatment made no difference to whether or not Nowak would have died that night: the wound he received caused bleeding deep in his chest cavity. It was not survivable.

Is this the mistake – the result of an awful series of events on a single night – that is supposed to provoke “pure cold rage” in decent Brits everywhere, as Nigel Farage claims? Is this truly the basis for the man who wants to be prime minister in just a few years claiming that the UK justice system is racist against whites?

Because, beyond the mistakes of the officers on the scene, it is hard to find what else the justice system is supposed to have done wrong here. The murder of Stephen Lawrence left a shadow over UK policing for decades, not least due to an inquiry’s conclusion that the Metropolitan Police was “institutionally racist”.

Stephen Lawrence was murdered by six men in a racially-motivated attack in 1993. It took 19 years for any of those men to face justice, and to this day four of the six have never been convicted – despite having been named as his killers in the media – thanks to systemic failures of policing.

This is not what happened in the Henry Nowak case. Nowak was killed in December 2025. Once police realised they had been deceived on the scene, they rapidly investigated, properly. 

They secretly recorded Digwa and his brother talking to one another, in Punjabi, about how they planned to mislead officers about the attack. Police quickly amassed more than enough evidence for prosecutors to use.

Less than six months after his killing, Nowak’s attacker has been convicted of murder and sentenced to at least 21 years in prison. Police failed Nowak in his final moments alive, but the justice system delivered exactly as it was supposed to do so for his family. Showing truly admirable restraint and forbearance, Nowak’s father said, clearly, that “we do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension”.

By even the most charitable reading – which they do not deserve – Nigel Farage’s remarks fail to pass the test set by Henry Nowak’s father. Farage has deliberately and cynically exploited a tragedy to stoke racial hatred. 

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Within hours of Farage’s comments, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far right agitator who calls himself Tommy Robinson, led a ‘protest’ outside Southampton Police Station, during which thugs threw rocks and other objects at officers. One man was even arrested for possession of an offensive weapon – a bitter irony, when Nowak’s father had explicitly asked for his son’s death to be used to take weapons off the streets.

Farage and Robinson are hardly alone. Craven politicians are using the case to imply systemic anti-white racism in the British state and in British policing. The facts of the case don’t support this, so they simply stoke rage instead. The brighter ones must surely know they are playing with forces they cannot control, and which could explode into violence. They must simply not care.

Farage is right about one thing. What is happening should inspire “pure cold rage” – directed at him. Deliberately stoking racial tensions for personal advantage in the wake of a murder is a despicable act. It is contemptible and craven, especially when it is done in open defiance of the wishes of the victim’s family. 

Tommy Robinson’s mediocre rally just weeks ago showed his diminishing relevance. Nigel Farage has desperately been trying to move on from ongoing questions around a £5 million personal “gift” he received from a crypto billionaire. Both men have exploited a very real tragedy to manufacture an outrage.

Decent people across the country should be furious, not at the justice system, but at these small, self-serving men. If they can’t be called out for what they are now, it will never happen. Who will rise to the moment?