KEMI BADENOCH: Why are they not kneeling now for poor Henry Nowak?

The murder of Henry Nowak has profoundly disturbed me for so many reasons.

First, there is the cruelty and callousness of the crime itself – completely unprovoked, utterly unwarranted. An example of the nihilism that has crept into our society, particularly among young people desensitised to the violence they see glorified on social media.

Then there is the shocking behaviour of the murderer’s family. Killer Vickrum Digwa’s mother Kiran Kaur, 53, showed a total lack of humanity in covering up a horrific crime by hiding the weapon – a separate offence for which she has rightly been convicted.

Third, the police response, too, exposed devastating failures. I understand how difficult and confusing the situation must have been. But the attending officers showed an unforgivable lack of common sense that meant Henry’s final moments were unimaginably harrowing.

Normally I avoid watching any videos on social media that show the death of an individual. But this time I forced myself to watch Henry’s final moments. Only by seeing it in full can one truly grasp the horror and understand how serious were the failures: Innocent Henry, handcuffed by the police as he lay dying, while his murderer calls him a ‘racist’ and officers read him his rights. It is three minutes I will never be able to scrub from my memory.

Henry’s murder and the police’s botched response must be a seminal moment for Britain on a par with the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager killed in 1993, which precipitated the Macpherson Report six years later, which found the Metropolitan Police to be ‘institutionally racist’.

Stephen’s murder forced the country to confront the intolerable and say: ‘This is not who we are.’ Indeed, many battles have been won in making our society better and fairer since then.

Only by seeing Henry Nowak’s final moments in full can one truly grasp the horror and understand how serious were the failures, writes Kemi Badenoch

Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner kneeled in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020. The Tory leader asks: ‘Why are they not kneeling now for Henry Nowak?’

Yet now we are going backwards – because of a pernicious identity politics amplified in 2020 by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota while being restrained by a white police officer.

I remember watching Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner take the knee in what is now my office and asking myself: ‘What on earth are you doing? Kneeling for an incident that occurred in another country about which you know little?’

Why are they not kneeling now for Henry Nowak?

Starmer and Rayner were not the only ones. The BLM movement exploited the naivety of many foolish politicians, businesses and public institutions who rushed to claim that racism in this country was comparable to what was happening in America.

I showed them the evidence that the police are not – certainly not any more – ‘institutionally racist’ in Britain. As a junior minister in 2021, I published a government report that proved exactly that. In response, I was called all sorts of names.

One Labour MP shared a post calling me ‘white supremacy in blackface’. I didn’t care, because I know that once you start giving allowances to ethnic minorities on the basis of ‘anti-racism’, there will be a backlash that will only fracture the country further.

As the equalities minister in 2022, I wrote to every public body from the NHS to the civil service about how they were dealing with the issues and in my ministerial brief I warned them not to act rashly because of pressure from activists. I was successful in many areas but, critically, not with the police.

I had meetings with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, with the Metropolitan Police, with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, with the College of Policing. I told them repeatedly that ‘anti-racism’ was not a cause they needed to champion: the real problems were a lack of integration and faith in our institutions.

Some agreed, but were too scared to say so publicly. The pressure from ‘community leaders’, rabid activists, well-meaning busybodies and ignorant do-gooders was too strong for all of them to ignore.

So they continued to drone on about ‘operational independence’ and ploughed on with their febrile agenda of diversity training and seminars from activists who advised them on how to manage these ‘issues’ and advisers who believed in ‘defunding’ the police.

We have now had more than 20 years of police ignoring or sidestepping the advice of ministers such as me and instead devising their own flawed approach. Now we see the results.

And this will keep happening unless politicians and other business leaders, public institutions and the rest of society stop being such cowards.

It’s easy to keep your head down and enjoy a quiet life. But that has never been in my nature.

While the BLM movement was at its peak, there was also a false, but hysterical, outcry that ethnic minorities were getting Covid because of ‘structural racism’. I was the only person prepared to stand up and say this was not true. I felt it was doubly important, as a black person, to do so. I produced research proving this was simply not the case.

Again, I was pilloried for it. But I didn’t care because it was the truth. This is why I tell people that the Conservative Party has changed under my leadership. I did these things before my time in government. I will take the same approach again.

I have said that we are going to root out all identity politics from state institutions – from removing diversity requirements from defence procurement to scrapping preferential sentencing for minorities.

But it can’t end there. No other political party has a plan for integration and assimilation.

That is why I was also disturbed by Nigel Farage’s video response to Henry’s killing yesterday.

Nigel Farage’s video response to Henry’s killing was disturbing, Mrs Badenoch argues, because the country needs a plan for integration and assimilation which he does not address

Yes, a lot needs to be fixed. But Farage was completely wrong to say that the ‘rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities’.

This is simply the language of the Black Lives Matter movement in reverse – inflaming tensions, emphasising difference. It is toxic tribal politics that divides our country.

The Conservative Party rejects identity politics in its entirety. Every other party – Labour, Reform, the Greens, SNP and others – is pandering to people based on the toxic ideology of separatism. Anyone bandying around policies that are anti-English, Scottish and Welsh; separatist or anti-white; still doesn’t get – or doesn’t care – how dangerous these beliefs can be.

I do not want a country fractured into hostile ethnic groups.

If you come to Britain, you cannot and must not bring the racial and cultural grievances of your home nations here, turning our country, our home, into the very place you were running away from.

Changing this disturbing status quo requires bravery from politicians. It won’t be easy: we will have to sweep out a lot of the historic, incoherent nonsense that has been brought in under the guise of anti-racism.

Notions of ‘white privilege’ and forcing ‘decolonisation’ narratives down the throats of children is not how we build a cohesive society.

We also need to stop the idea that racism is something that happens only to ethnic minorities, perpetrated by white people. This seems to have been the belief of officers in the terrible case of Henry Nowak.

Public bodies must understand that anyone can be a victim of racism.

They should also acknowledge that an accusation of ‘racism’ alone is not evidence and certainly isn’t a bigger crime than violence or murder.

These are the principles that the Conservative Party believes in: universalism, equality under the law, not treating people differently based on skin colour, and making sure that we always build faith and trust in our institutions – rather than trying to destroy them.

That is what I am committed to.

I do not want Henry’s death to be in vain.

Let’s get this right for him.