I sympathise far more with the police at the scene of Henry Nowak’s murder than with their bosses who send mixed signals on race.
People are right to be angry about the murder of Henry Nowak. But rage is not a strategy. People like JD Vance will blame migration. Others social media, knives, racism or the police. There will be recrimination and finger-pointing, with too many people forcing the facts to fit what they want to believe. There is a lot to be angry about but the job of a politician is not to tell people to be angry, but to offer solutions.
People need us to fix what has gone wrong.
I have my own view of what has gone wrong. Some will disagree. But this much should be beyond dispute: if police training or guidance encourages officers to treat people differently because of race, then public trust cannot survive. This is why I have asked the prime minister for a rapid independent review. Whether we hail from the left or right, we must all examine our own biases in this case. However, this does not mean we should kick uncomfortable questions into the long grass.
I don’t want to blame the police officers. It’s clear the situation was confusing not least because the murderer pretended he was a victim. But why were they so easily convinced? How was it possible that the police officers heard two accusations, one of racism and the other of stabbing, and it was the racism they appeared most attuned to?
I believe the issue is the training they are given. Well-meaning, but totally wrong-headed, lacking in common sense and possibly illegal. Common sense is disappearing because people have replaced thinking with box-ticking. The police have been given mixed signals by government, legal guidance, training and leadership. Officers are also juggling race action plans, political pressure and activist expectations. The problem is not institutional racism towards blacks or whites but institutional incompetence.
I have sympathy for frontline officers. I am horrified by the protests where frontline police are attacked. They get a lot of flak and face unnecessary investigations even when they do the right thing to protect the public, such as using stop and search to find deadly weapons, using force to detain a potential killer, or high-speed chases of dangerous criminals. These unfair investigations need to stop. They hold officers back or make them too risk-averse.
I have far less sympathy for policing’s senior leaders, who have allowed these ill-advised frameworks to take hold in the force. It is the police chiefs, operationally independent from government, who must take responsibility for letting that happen.
Common sense is, of course, subjective. You can’t write common sense down in a policy manual, it is about judgment. And judgment only works when people are trusted to use it and held accountable when they do not.
It is almost impossible to apply common sense these days. Public bodies are pressured into bad frameworks by modish progressives who are so open-minded their brains have fallen out.
Public institutions have become frightened of getting race wrong. So they have outsourced moral judgment to activist consultants and “community leaders” who often do not represent the public and have no business writing or auditing policing frameworks. Organisations such as the Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board which audits the police race action plan is run by people who believe in defunding the police. It should be scrapped.
Community leaders should not have a veto over policing. We saw where that led in Birmingham, with the ban on the fans of Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv. There have also been frequent decisions not to arrest people calling for destruction of Jews, because advice on religious sensitivities encourages police to explain the words away rather than confront what they’re saying.
Just as politicians, businesses, public and cultural institutions outsourced judgment on biological sex to organisations such as Stonewall operating outside the law, they have done the same on race and religion in our public bodies.
Sometimes the activism is internal. Should the National Association of Muslim Police or the National Black Police Association be influencing policy? Should identity-based staff networks still exist in modern Britain? Would we feel comfortable if there was a White Police Association? These are uncomfortable questions we must ask.
The solution
The Conservative answer rests on three principles that distinguish us from every other party:
The first is universalism. This means every citizen must be treated as an individual person, not as part of a group. The Equality Act states this clearly, yet guidance supposedly based on the act pretends protected characteristics of race or religion or sexuality that apply to everyone are actually just for minority groups. Equality under the law means: one law, one standard, one set of expectations.
The second principle is that differences in outcome are not proof of discrimination.
We have to examine facts and evidence before ideology. If public bodies diagnose everything as racism or sexism, they can’t solve the real problem.
That is why the Macpherson principle needs re-examination. It states that a racist incident is racist if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person. This may have made sense in a different context long ago. Today, it risks turning accusation into fact. An accusation of racism should never outrank an accusation of violence as we saw in Henry’s case.
The third principle is that we rebuild trust in failing institutions rather than undermine them to punish failure. We must hold institutions to account without casually destroying them.
Our aim is to restore public trust in policing by making sure forces act fairly, competently and under rules that work for everyone.
In March, I gave a speech explaining that the Conservative party will remove identity politics from all public bodies. This will require many changes. Police leaders cannot hide behind operational independence while adopting contested political frameworks.
There will be the inevitable cries of: “You had 14 years. Why didn’t you do this in government?” In fact I did. I produced serious reports, substantial supporting evidence and easily useable guidance. Letters were written to all public bodies.
The result was a mixed bag. Embattled organisations who needed our support implemented the actions. Others simply stalled and waited for a Labour government they knew would indulge the leftist ideals of identity politics. The police pointed to the Macpherson report and told me I was wrong, that disparities in outcomes proved they must be institutionally racist.
Academics and left-wing politicians were the most vitriolic. Labour MPs shared attacks calling me “the black face of white supremacy”. I have spent my political career fighting against identity politics on the left when it came from Labour, Lib Dems, SNP. I will do exactly the same against identity politics when it comes from Reform UK.
Conclusion
Britain must reject tribal politics from both left and right. The Black Lives Matter movement did not improve trust. It made institutions more frightened, more racialised and more divided. Now we are seeing the flip side: A White Lives Matter born of the same racial grievance. We will not defeat identity politics by building a mirror-image version of it. There is a silent majority across every community who want order, fairness, common sense and one law for everyone. That is the country we can be again.
I met Henry Nowak’s family last week. They want his tragic death to have a positive legacy, a country brought together rather than pulled apart, and trust in the police rebuilt. That will only happen if we take ideology out of policing, restore equal treatment, and give good officers the confidence to use their judgment.
Henry’s family do not want his name used to spread hatred. His legacy should be a country that refuses to be divided, refuses to be intimidated by bad ideas, and has the courage to restore common sense where it has been lost. That is how we rebuild trust. That is how we honour Henry. The country owes him much more than outrage.
