Last December, a young man in Southampton was murdered.
I deeply regret any murder or unnecessary loss of life, however caused.
In the aftermath of the guilty verdict for the murderer this week, reckless UK politicians have reacted to what clearly was a mistake by the police officers who initially attended this incident by calling for 'cold rage'.
The parents of the young man who died called for calm in the aftermath of this month's murder conviction. Nigel Farage and others ignored that request and claimed that there is two-tier policing in the UK.
There is not. There are human beings who take on the role of policing, many of whom are themselves quite young and relatively inexperienced, who, like all of us, are capable of making errors in the heat of the moment.
That such an error occurred appears apparent in this case, although the confusion that they faced when arriving at this scene appears to have been underplayed in the discussions that have taken place.
What I do know is that this is a situation where any politician should have stood back and decided that this was the moment to offer sympathy, suggest that an enquiry take place, that lessons be learned, and that the heat be taken out of the moment; the far right did nothing of that sort.
Nigel Farage, who is now in internal exile somewhere within the UK whilst avoiding questions about the £5 million donation he received before deciding to run for Parliament, has demanded 'cold rage' from the UK public in response to what he has claimed is racist policing.
No doubt, Restore will do the same.
I am just hoping that Kemi Badenoch has the sense to stay clear of this issue in Parliament today. It will be a test of her judgment as to whether she does or not.
Almost inevitably, some responded to Farage's demand last night. He knew they would. He knew what he wanted. There was violence against the police in Southampton as a result.
Thankfully, it was relatively cool last night, which is good news because heat and high political temperatures do not mix well. But if Farage and his allies continue to make provocative statements of this sort, we can expect three things.
Firstly, policing will become very much more difficult in the UK, and it is already hard.
Secondly, policing will become much more political, and it is already bad enough in this regard.
Thirdly, we can expect more demonstrations and even rioting.
Farage knows this from the experience at Southport, and what everybody else should realise is that this man is more than willing to exploit anyone's unfortunate death for his own gain.
Fascism always seeks to divide populations. Farage is pursuing a fascist approach to his campaigning. It is impossible to say otherwise. A family who asked for the peace to grieve, and the community in Southampton, and probably elsewhere, will be those who suffer as a result, all so that Farage hopes he might win a bye-election. His politics is moving into the realm of the unacceptable, and beyond. His indifference is staggering.
We should be genuinely worried about what comes next, because I am quite sure there is worse to come.
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That is the key thing. A young man lost his life in extremely tragic and horrifying circumstances.
And then there are those who are seeking to use it to create anger, hatred, division and to further their own cause. Evil doesn’t come close to describing them.
Craig
Like the bloke he worships – Trump – he and his best mate Yusuf just sees the British people as willing dupes. Farage is an abuser. Watching Yusuf being interviewed on C4 news last night was like watching an apex predator move in for the kill. Deadly.
I could not face him for long. He was disgusting.
Just googled Muhammad Ziauddin “Zia” Yusuf. He is rather disgusting.
What I do not get is this: Is he not in the group of people that Reform and some of the Conservatives want to deport/expel from England???
I apologize in advance if I am getting him up with some other dangerous disgusting cogger as there are so many of this breed out and about.
Ah, but you forget, all rules have exemptions for the wealthy. He is that.
Thank you, PSR, BTB and Richard.
Yusuf, like Sunak, is ex Goldman Sachs. He flounced out of the Tories when he could not get a seat. I have long wondered if Sunak knows something about Yusuf from their former parish and made sure Yusuf did not get selected.
Thank you, PSR, BTB and Richard.
I forgot to answer BTB’s question.
The likes of Yusuf, Braverman, Patel and even Badenoch, Mahmood and Trevor Philips kid themselves that they will be spared expulsion and aren’t the tokens to front such policies, coverage. They are the 21st century’s Askaris and Sepoys. Braverman and Patel are descendants of the empire’s footsoldiers in East Africa, similar to Ulster planters.
Yusuf’s parents are from Sri Lanka. His grandparents are from what is now Bangladesh.
And there also now seems to be a ‘Reform Friends of Israel’ Perhaps they’ve seen what a gravy train the Labour Friends of Israel is and thought they might like a bit of that?
Thank you, Philip.
Their X account is run out of Israel.
Labour, Reform, Tommy Robinson and a very senior police commander I shan’t name, share the same donors.
Thank you, Richard.
Let’s not forget the BBC and even Sky’s relentless platforming and narrative. Francophones have a phrase for such people “pompier pyromane”.
In addition to diverting attention from his financial skeletons, Farage needs to shore up his base against Restore and even the Tories and get Reform to focus on a common enemy. There’s infighting in the “company”. The other shareholder, Mohammed Zia Uddin Yusuf, is supposed to be the party manager, but he has been neglecting such duties, such as vetting the candidate in Makerfield, and passes himself off as shadow home secretary.
The City continues its engagement with Reform. Discussions are led by Prue Leith’s son, Danny Kruger. Farage feels ill at ease in such fora and has little interest.
How do I know all that? A former colleague works in public affairs and leads his firm’s / facilitates client engagement with Reform.
Thank you
“The City continues its engagement with Reform. Discussions are led by Prue Leith’s son, Danny Kruger.”
Henry Ford did business for years with Nazi Germany. Does anything really ever change???
Thank you.
I used to work for Deutsche Bank and also often worked in Switzerland. In addition to European big business and Ford, the Bush family were also involved with the nazi war machine.
BBC characterised the braying violent mob that took to the streets and attacked police officers and intimidated the family of the alleged murderer as “protesters”.
Just like those of us who peacefully sit on the ground and hold posters in support of Palestine and Defend our Juries, and are prosecuted as “terrorist sympathisers” .
BBC News is a fully sighned up far-right supprt organisation these days, as its reporting of this episode shows.
Thank you, Helen.
It may be comforting to think, not that I’m suggesting you and other members of this community do so, that BBC and other journalists have to report like that due to pressure from the top. Many, if not most, of them share Farage’s views.
From the transcript of the court case (Digwa Final Sentencing Remarks).
27. Another consequence of those lies is that the attending police officers honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him with the consequence he was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated and the arresting officer began CPR. The police were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident. It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife through it, would not have been obvious. Whilst there was visible blood on Henry, it would not have clearly been seen coming from that wound and the clearly visible facial wound was not life threatening. Henry was complaining that he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe but that would not have necessarily told the officers how serious the situation had become. It is the experience of the criminal courts that sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released. These police officers were faced with having to make quick decisions in pressurised circumstances about the best way to act. The genuine shock to the particular police officer, when he realised that he had been giving CPR to Henry when he had a serious chest wound tends to show that he was doing his best in a very difficult situation.
Thank you
This is from London loves business
Mr Lowe of Restore
“A Restore Britain Government, with the British people’s approval, would put Vickrum Digwa to death. Henry Nowak was stabbed by Digwa five times, including twice in the back of his legs, once in the face and a fatal wound to the chest. Rather than calling an ambulance, Digwa filmed Henry.
Digwa gave the knife to his mother and it was found by police at their home along with more than 20 other weapons. Keeping this savage alive serves nobody.
The police officers on the scene who allowed Henry to die will face criminal charges for gross negligence manslaughter. Digwa’s foreign family will be deported. Laws will change, the country will change, everything will change. Order will be restored, the law will be restored. Britain will be restored.”
We need to recognise what Restore really stands. They talk about people not sharing ‘our values’. I don’t share Rupert Lowe’s values.
Neither do I
They are repulsive
The wall to wall coverage by BBC et al seems designed to facilitate the fascist narrative of two-tier policing ‘white lives don’t matter’, just platforming opinions – with no reference to all recent reports and studies which show the institutional racism embedded in some police forces.<.
Its the 1930’s.
A significant number of “protestors” arrested during the Southport riots in 2024 were found to have been domestic abusers.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/26/one-in-five-people-arrested-over-2024-riots-have-since-been-reported-for-domestic-abuse
You want to talk about two tiers in society, let’s ask women what they think.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3exg3zgk5vo
Where were the rioters after this?
Given the number of arrests for “cardboard terrorism” recently, and the government’s concern over “hate marches”, why aren’t we cracking down on “incitement to riot” by prominent political figures awash with foreign cash?
Fa***e called for “cold rage”. He knew what he wanted. He knew exactly what WOULD happen.
He should be chatting to law enforcement under caution, he can cover incitement and his £5m at the same time.
I don’t think Farage and his chums have any real idea of the dangers of inciting lawless, mostly ignorant thugs to wreak havoc upon society. These people are the antithesis of peaceful, good-natured protesters. They wouldn’t stop at confronting the police with bricks and other weapons, but are likely to attack any bystanders they dislike and any properties that are unprotected. Many of them are convicted violent criminals, including domestic violence. If they attack their own families, they are likely to do worse to strangers. They are also very likely to use the cover of rioting to commit other serious crimes.
The response of the police and the courts to these people has been robust and swift in the recent past. It must be again, despite attempts by irresponsible politicians to weaken the police rationale for such a response. Certain politicians think they would benefit from anarchy, and these hopes lead them to rabble-rouse.
So, what can good people do in the face of rabble-rousing, thuggery, and ignorance? Just keep calling it out whenever and wherever you can.
“I don’t think Farage and his chums have any real idea of the dangers of inciting lawless”
They know exactly what they are doing, and its being supported by the MSM and the BBC in particular.
Three of my siblings were in the police, two as frontline officers, the other in the radio room. In the 90s and 2000s, racism, misogyny and homophobia were being squeezed out, slowly and painfully by internal investigation (but NOT in the notoriously corrupt Met, both siblings refused promotion into the Met for that reason). Many forces weeded out racists etc during training, and suspect officers were usually awarded the department of death, traffic policing, as a punishment. However, all changed in 2011. Teresa May pushed out the long-servers (many of them training or supervising new recruits) and most backroom staff, a disaster that has primed some of today’s problems. Massive cuts to the frontline ensued. Meanwhile, many forces contracted out recruitment (some since taking it back in house). This was another disaster, as the weeding out no longer occurred. Consequently, there’s more than a few ‘bad apples’, and far right sympathy is rife. Two of my wife’s nephews are now coppers in the North Midlands area. Their job is hard, with the huge drug gangs, some of them ex-military types, often armed with machetes or guns. Domestic violence, racism etc are secondary concerns. One of them (a leftie) is appalled by the views expressed openly in his station BTW.
You describe what I have heard from people who I know who are, or have been, police officers.
Sergeants who cannot secure further promotion are the worst, in their opinions, it seems.
I can corroborate this from friends in the force. The drive to quickly replace police lost to austerity has allowed in many bad apples—another case of not being able to cycle back up an institution after defunding it.
From her essay ‘Revolution and Equilibrium’, Barbara Deming (1917-1984) wrote:
“With one hand we say to one who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system, ‘Stop what you are doing. I refuse to honour the role you are choosing to play. I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with your demands. I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the wrong you are doing. I want to disrupt it.’
“But then the advocate of nonviolence raises the other hand. It is raised outstretched—maybe with love and sympathy, maybe not—but always outstretched… With this hand we say, ‘I won’t let go of you or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice than you are making now, and I’ll be here when you are ready. Like it or not, we are part of one another.’”
Thank you
I would generally avoid listening to Nick Ferrari, as his attitudes invariably make my skin crawl, but I accidentally came across a YouTube clip yesterday of him interviewing Farage. Ferrari allowed or rather encouraged him to roll out his ridiculous complaints about “two-tier policing” and the mainstream media ignoring the whole issue, but particularly ignoring Farage himself. This could not be further from the truth, but of course Ferrari went along with it all, allowing him free rein to pontificate on the state of what Farage described as “this ghastly country”. In reality, one of the main things wrong with this country is Farage’s ghastly incitement of his more ghastly followers to commit ghastly crimes against the police, innocent bystanders and the public in general. Ferrari is a smart man, who clearly understands the parallels between the far right’s tactics and those used in the 1930s, yet he’s prepared to give them the space to broadcast them, with little or no challenge. What conclusions are we to draw from this?
That he agrees?
One comment on this I read on LI was enlightening “in my experience, police respond to the situation they were called out to”. In this case they were called out to a racial attack, and responded accordingly.
For me this made an earlier experience click – someone I know found themselves arrested by 6 officers for kicking in their neighbour’s door. They hadn’t. They hadn’t even been there when the neighbour reported it. But the police responded to what they’d been told and the result was a night in the cells. I’m guessing that the neighbour knew that that was exactly what would happen.
So the problem really is that the police aren’t trained to assess what they find before they act on the reported crime. There’s no ‘Hello, hello, what’s going on here then’.
In the US, people are assassinated using this method. Just report a burglar, and the police will shoot whoever they see first when they arrive.
Thank you
It is so often the case that he who ‘sees the bigger picture’ is observably no empath, and overtly has his own agenda to promote.