All successful politicians have The Moment. An instant where national events, the public mood and their political instincts move decisively into alignment.
People often cite the Falklands as such an occasion for Margaret Thatcher. But they’re wrong. Her real turning point came a year earlier, during the 1981 IRA hunger strike crisis.
Thatcher, still a relatively new and untried leader, faced unprecedented pressure internationally, domestically and within her own Cabinet to bow to the prisoners’ demands. She refused.
On the day of Bobby Sands’ death, she went to the House of Commons to deliver what many thought would be a speech of capitulation. It was not.
‘Mr Sands was a convicted criminal’, she said. ‘He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to any of their victims.’
I still remember one of my relatives from Birkenhead who despised the then Tory Prime Minister nodding his approval. ‘Good for her,’ he muttered.
That was when the Iron Lady was created. And the country realised that, like her or loathe her, she was a politician who would not be diverted from her chosen course.
For Tony Blair, The Moment was the death of Princess Diana. Today, his ‘People’s Princess’ line may seem saccharine. But when he uttered those words, he spoke for a grieving nation.
One of his aides, who was on a hiking trip that day, watched Blair’s statement on the TV of a local newsagent. He told me: ‘I thought, “Oh no. He’s gone too far here.” Then I turned round. And the newsagent and all her customers were in tears.’
Brushing aside the opportunity to criticise her political opponents, Kemi Badenoch said during her appearance on Good Morning Britain: ‘This is about Henry Nowak’
Britain awoke looking for someone – anyone – to properly articulate the pain, disgust and despair felt by those who had seen the harrowing footage of Henry’s final moments, writes Dan Hodges
On Tuesday, it was Kemi Badenoch’s turn. In the wake of the conviction of the murderer of Henry Nowak, Britain awoke looking for someone – anyone – to properly articulate the pain, disgust and despair felt by those who had seen the harrowing footage of Henry’s final moments. They found it in the Leader of the Opposition.
Brushing aside the opportunity to criticise her political opponents, she said during her appearance on Good Morning Britain: ‘This is about Henry Nowak.’
She said the case showed that ‘something has gone very horribly wrong with policing, and I think I know why. I think in 2020/21 there was a response to the George Floyd murder that has overcorrected, and caused a lot of problems,’ she explained.
‘We all need to take a long, hard look at ourselves. It is not just the police… We need to bring back equality under the law…
‘I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter.’
Badenoch’s humane but composed response was especially impressive, because she had only been shown the appalling footage while in the car to the GMB studio. And was already battling her emotions on a number of fronts.
As one friend told me, as the mother of mixed-race children, knife crime is one of her most potent fears. ‘It’s why she’s been so strong on stop and search’, they told me.
‘Her primary concern isn’t her kids being hassled by the police, it’s them being stabbed.’
When the Prime Minister finally delivered a short, pooled news clip, the debate and the country had moved on. There will be no Starmer moment
Another issue that has infuriated her is that, as equalities minister at the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, Badenoch was desperately warning the police and other authorities of the dangers of overreacting to the global response, something she revealed in her powerful piece in the Daily Mail yesterday.
‘What’s driving her mad is that this is precisely what she was warning about,’ an aide revealed to me.
‘She spent month after month telling the cops and others, “Don’t go too far with this stuff or it will come back to haunt you”. But they just wouldn’t listen.’
A couple of hours after Badenoch’s appearance on GMB, I spoke to a member of her shadow cabinet, someone who is not always her biggest cheerleader. ‘Kemi was brilliant’, they acknowledged. ‘She looked more like the Prime Minister than Starmer does’.
Sadly, that is no longer hard. As a father of teenage children, Keir Starmer also feels the death of Henry Nowak acutely. But over the past 48 hours, the nation has been looking for leadership. And the Prime Minister has been missing in action. His initial reaction to the guilty verdict was to simply issue a short tweet. It took pressure from the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to force the Government into even making a statement. And when Starmer finally delivered a short, pooled news clip, the debate and the country had moved on.
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I know why Henry Nowak was treated as a criminal as he lay dying: PETER HITCHENS
For months, people have been speculating about when Sir Keir would step down. But the reality is that he has already checked out of Downing Street.
A vacuum has been created as everyone in Westminster simply sits around, like characters in a Beckett play, waiting for the conclusion of the Makerfield by-election. There will be no Starmer Moment.
There is, however, something emerging from this crisis for Nigel Farage. And unless he’s careful, it will be a political reckoning.
Reform’s leader has been a masterful exponent of the views of those huge swathes of Britain that have become estranged from, and belittled by, our ruling political class. But over the last couple of decades, as much of what the British people hold dear has been stripped away from them, there is one thing they have clung to tenaciously: their basic sense of decency.
On Monday, following the conviction of his son’s murderer, Henry Nowak’s father made the following plea: ‘We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension’.
Nigel Farage ignored him. Instead, he took to the airwaves to demand people rise up with ‘pure cold rage’.
That ignorant and intemperate appeal would, in itself, have been bad enough. But then a few hours later on Tuesday, Farage’s social media team took to X to distribute an attack advert that deliberately and callously misrepresented Kemi Badenoch’s words from earlier in the morning.
It claimed she had simply said ‘Black Lives do matter’, ignoring the rest of what she had said on GMB.
That night, an enraged mob took to the streets of Southampton, attacking police officers and vandalising property.
It’s right that the broader issues surrounding Henry Nowak’s appalling murder are now debated without fear or favour. But before that debate begins, Nigel Farage has a decision to make.
Does he want to become an alternative Prime Minister? Or does he want to become head of the British branch of the White Lives Matter Movement – with all the chaos and division that will inevitably entail?
Actually, it doesn’t matter. Britain has now found its leader. And her name is Kemi Badenoch.
