Kemi Badenoch’s remarks came after the murder of Polish-British student Henry Nowak by a Sikh man triggered uproar over what was seen as two-tier policing
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed UK politicians over what she described as attempts to score points on existing racial divisions, warning that it risked pushing the country towards a “civil war.”
Speaking in an interview with the BBC aired on Friday, Badenoch reacted to the murder of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old Polish-British university student, who was stabbed five times by Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh. The incident took place in Southampton in December 2025, but gained a national spotlight only recently.
When police arrived, Digwa falsely claimed he had been the victim of a racist assault, with police initially believing his account. Body-cam footage released after sentencing showed officers handcuffing the dying student as he repeatedly told them he had been stabbed and could not breathe.
While Digwa was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years, the fall-out triggered widespread uproar, protests, and accusations of “two-tier policing” and “anti-white prejudice” in Britain. The incident also drew outcry from the US – a traditional UK ally – with the State Department warning that “ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline.”
Badenoch insisted that Britain “is not a racist country,” but acknowledged that “we are now seeing more and more hostility to people of every ethnicity, whether they’re English or not English.”
However, she insisted that the real driver of tension was politicians using racial divisions to harvest votes and importing these conflicts into communities that had previously been spared from them.
“Parties which do that, politicians who do that, they may get to benefit in the short term, but in the long term, that’s how you end up with civil war,” Badenoch warned.
While Badenoch did not name specific politicians, one of those who seized on the controversy was Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, widely known for his anti-immigration agenda. Farage called for “pure cold rage” in response to the incident.
Reform UK is currently polling at around 27%, with Labour and the Conservatives tied at roughly 18% each. Meanwhile, Badenoch herself became the Tory leader after former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s landslide defeat in the general election in 2024, which was in large part caused by the party’s identitarian and cultural policies as well as a failure to deliver on immigration promises.
The culture war has long plagued British politics, with one of the most notable instances coming in August 2025 when “Operation Raise the Colours” saw activists tying Union Jacks and St. George’s Cross flags to lampposts across England. While the protest was framed as an expression of patriotism, some Labour-run councils disagreed, ordering the flags to be removed over concerns that they were sowing division – a move that drew furious condemnation from Reform UK.
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