Badenoch says Henry Nowak’s killing a moment like Stephen Lawrence murder

Rob Freeman, Press Association

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called the killing of student Henry Nowak a “seminal moment for Britain” on par with the murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also described the 18-year-old finance student’s death as “a watershed moment for this country”.

Protesters pelted police with missiles on Tuesday in clashes close to where Mr Nowak was stabbed to death in December 2025.

Hundreds of people had earlier gathered outside Southampton Central Police Station where activist Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox were among those to address the crowd.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mrs Badenoch said: “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.”

Vickrum Digwa, 23, who was given a life sentence with a minimum of 21 years in prison for stabbing Mr Nowak with a ceremonial knife, told police at the scene he had been the victim of a racist attack.

In body-worn camera footage from the incident, Mr Nowak can be heard repeatedly saying: “I’ve been stabbed”, to which an officer replies: “Don’t think you have, mate.”

Mrs Badenoch said “pernicious identity politics” had seen the country “going backwards”, criticising then Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his then deputy Angela Rayner for kneeling amid Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while being restrained by a white police officer in 2020.

“Why are they not kneeling now for Henry Nowak?” she asked, saying the police response to the stabbing had “exposed devastating failures”, although she said police in the UK are no longer institutionally racist.

She also criticised Mr Farage for saying 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,” she said. “It is toxic tribal politics that divides our country.”

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Farage said the nation needs “to take a step back and take a long, hard look at ourselves and ask what on earth we have become”.

He said the behaviour of police officers responding to Mr Nowak’s stabbing “shocked so many of us to the core” and said an “accusation of a racial slur was treated more seriously than an act of murder”.

“Those images are impossible to watch without feeling a profound sense of anger,” he said, also likening the incident and ensuing reaction to the death of Mr Floyd.

He called on the Independent Office for Police Conduct to complete its investigation into Mr Nowak’s death “swiftly and transparently”.

“For many people, this case reinforces a growing perception that Britain now operates according to a two-tier culture, where some groups receive greater protection than others,” he wrote.

“Make no mistake, this is not a perception that emerged overnight. It is the product of decades of political choices.

“The result has been a culture in which institutions appear increasingly preoccupied with questions of identity and group membership. The consequences are now visible.”