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The Economist Looks at the 'New' Dangerous Rhetoric About Anti-White Prejudice in British Politics

In case you missed the story, there was outrage in Britain this week when police released bodycam footage of an 18-year-old university student being handcuffed by police, even though he said he'd been stabbed and couldn't breathe. "I don't think you have, mate," one officer can be heard saying on the video. The police were arresting Henry Nowak for allegedly racially assaulting Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh who was carrying with him an eight-inch ceremonial blade called a kirpan. Nowak died, and Digwa was sentenced this week to 21 years in prison, the minimum sentence. Digwa's mother was also charged with concealing the murder weapon.

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The argument, of course, is whether the police's "anti-racist" training had led them to calmly take a false statement from Digwa while Nowak bled out on the ground, handcuffed.

The Economist says that rhetoric about anti-white prejudice is new to British politics (it's not … it's the reason Prime Minister Starmer has the nickname "two-tier Kier"). The Economist also says the rhetoric is dangerous … because it could cause white voters to vote for Nigel Farage and his Reform UK Party. The Economist reports that this was not Britain's "George Floyd moment."

Nigel Farage and his Reform UK colleagues on the populist right have been less measured. Mr Farage broadcast an “emergency address” on June 2nd in which he called on the public to respond “with pure, cold rage” and declared: “White lives matter too.” Robert Jenrick, his economic spokesman, said: “There is an issue with anti-white racism in this country.” When Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader who boasts of her anti-woke credentials, accused Mr Farage of trying to stir up division by presenting himself as the defender of whites, Reform’s aggressive home-affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, retorted, shamefully: “Kemi and the Tory party do not care about white people.”

This sort of rhetoric is new to British politics—and dangerous. The main parties have largely agreed on a message of racial unity, and avoided encouraging the white majority to nurse grievances.

So why has he embraced a new, uglier way of thinking, which explicitly casts white people as a group that now requires help? Reform points to a handful of genuinely concerning examples where crimes committed by ethnic minorities were downplayed out of misplaced concerns about stigma or stereotyping—notably the “grooming gangs” scandal in which groups of Pakistani-origin men sexually abused (mostly white) girls.

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They're afraid Reform UK might overtake the Labour Party. That's it.

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The rhetoric isn't new. In January of 2025, the Labour Party blocked an inquiry into Pakistani grooming gangs.

There's a report that police rules are under review since Nowak's death in handcuffs.

The post continues:

… fix societal racial gaps

5.  Deliver “equality of outcomes” by treating people differently based on race,needs,experiences

6.  Show transparency, leadership & measure anti-racism impact

Translation:

>do not treat everyone equally under the law

>explicitly reject colour-blind policing

>respond based on skin color and “lived experience” to engineer equal results

The police at the scene did exactly that and the outcome was an absolute tragedy.

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Again, the only "danger" The Economist sees is Farage and the Reform UK Party gaining in the polls.

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