Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old student who was stabbed five times in Southampton and left bleeding out while police handcuffed him and cautioned him. This happened because his killer made a false claim of racism and the police believed it. The bodycam footage is unbearable. Henry said, ‘I have been stabbed’ and ‘I can’t breathe’. The officers dismissed him.
His family has said, heartbreakingly, that he did not die with dignity. This is a failure of policing, born of decades of ideology that puts community tensions above evidence, above humanity, and above a dying young man’s blood.
Two voices have stood out to me so far. Not because I agree with everything they say, and not because they agree with everything I have written, but because they have cut through the noise with something we rarely see in our political class: grace, clarity, principle, and, most importantly, basic human decency.
Those voices belong to Kemi Badenoch and Festus Akinbusoye. One is the leader of the Conservative party. The other is a former police and crime commissioner, special constable, and councillor in Westminster. Both have Nigerian heritage, and neither seems remotely interested in playing the identity game. In 2026 Britain, that is very important.
Badenoch and Akinbusoye are showing us what real leadership and commentary can look like
Festus wrote a piece in a recent edition of the Independent, and it is worth reading in full. He did not shy away from the horror. Henry deserved better than to die in handcuffs while his murderer’s lies were initially believed. He backs a swift investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct and wants accountability.
But he refutes Nigel Farage’s attempts to turn this tragedy into a one-sided culture war prop. As a man who says that he was stopped and searched far more often than the national average for young black men, Festus knows from personal experience what it feels like when it goes wrong.
Yet he still insists on the same standard for everyone. Officers must act on evidence, apply the law consistently, and treat every victim, regardless of colour, with equal urgency and equal humanity. That is the bare minimum any of us should demand. What I admire most about Festus is that he refuses to let grievance define the conversation.
Kemi Badenoch has been equally unflinching. She has met with Henry’s family. She watched the footage and said it will stay with her forever. She has described the police response as ‘unforgivable’ and called for this case to be a seminal moment for Britain, on a par with the Stephen Lawrence case, but with crucial differences. Racism, unfortunately, happens to everybody, and an accusation alone is not evidence.
There can never be a larger crime than being stabbed or murdered. Badenoch has rejected two-tier thinking. She says there can be no two-tier policing and rejects the belief that racism only happens to ethnic minorities. It happens to everyone. You must have one law and one standard for everyone.
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. In the last couple of days Kemi has shown her class, her ability, and her humanity. In moments of national crisis people rise to the top and get to show their quality. It is a terrible job being a politician at times like this, because these are the moments that define a politician’s career. Yet it has only come about because of the tragic killing of a young man who was just at the start of his life. This may well be the moment when Kemi Badenoch moved from being leader of the Conservative party to a genuine hope for many as the next prime minister.
Both Kemi Badenoch and Festus Akinbusoye could have played these cards differently. It could easily have been framed through the lens of their own skin colour or background. Instead, they have chosen the harder and better path: judge the evidence, judge the actions, and, most importantly, judge the character.
Henry was a young lad walking home. His killer chose violence and then chose to lie about race to try to save himself. The killer has ruined his own family and destroyed his own life, just as he has killed Henry and destroyed Henry’s family’s life. That is an almost unbearable tragedy.
The officers, however good their intentions may have been, made the wrong call because they had been trained for years to fear the wrong thing. Kemi and Festus refused to let any of that be reduced to identity checkboxes. This is not a new idea. At one time we would have considered it the right, simple, and only way of dealing with our fellow humans. The genius, of course, is in the simplicity. It is irrelevant what identity group you belong to. All that matters is whether you are a good and decent person, whether you can be trusted, whether you are kind, considerate, helpful, and honest, and so on and so forth.
The so-called new ‘identity politics’ that have infiltrated and poisoned police training are just Marxist conflict theory dressed up in modern clothes. It will only lead to fragmented societies and a hierarchy of victims. It actively encourages victimhood and rewards grievances. As we see in the news day after day, it fuels division, polarisation, hate and fear.
For those of us who loathe and despise racial prejudice of all kinds, and for those of us who crave a colour-blind society, one solution and one solution only exists. We must ditch critical race theory, banish two-tier policing, and return to the ideals that underpin Martin Luther King’s dream and make it a reality.
Henry Nowak is not a symbol. He was a young man with an entire life ahead of him. The officers who failed him are not cartoon villains. They are the product of a system that taught them to see colour and community before human beings. The killer, who lied about racism, does not represent any faith or ethnicity. He is a murderer: a young man who made a terrible choice that has ruined his life and that of his family. He killed Henry and destroyed Henry’s family too. That he reached for the same ideology that is now tearing us apart is indicative of a deeper problem in society around race and racism.
Kemi Badenoch and Festus Akinbusoye are showing us what real leadership and commentary can look like. They have put character first. They remind us that decency and honour are not the property of any particular skin colour, tribe or political identity or tick box. It is, and always has been, a choice.
It is still possible if enough of us make the right choice, publicly and unapologetically, without fear or favour and without fear of being called names. Maybe the next young man, the next Henry Nowak, will be treated as a dying boy who needs help, not as a potential community relations problem.
That is the Britain I want. I suspect it is the Britain most of us still want. Let’s build it together.
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