The response to a student’s death at the hands of a knife-obsessed attacker on the streets of Southampton has left a muddled and upsetting mood in its wake.
For those who believe that this was an example of what the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, terms “two tier policing”, the police’s mistaken handcuffing of Henry Nowak, after his assailant accused him of racism, was a glaring error.
Courtesy of the magnification of social media and a desire to make it stand for something far larger, there has been a lively competition to make a horrible murder into a cause célèbre.
That is precisely what Nowak’s family begged should not happen, but the voices of those genuinely grieving his death are now sidelined by those who want to deploy the case to sharpen their own appeal: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and its apostate off-shoot Restore Britain, lead by Rupert Lowe.
Lowe has claimed the police bias in the Nowak case was “conscious” and seeded by “DEI” (diversity and inclusion) training, though that link is tenuous. Farage called for “pure cold range” from the public in response to the murder.
