Mark Antony had a problem. He needed to demolish a man while appearing to honour him. “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” he told the Roman mob, before proceeding to do exactly the opposite. It is one of history’s great rhetorical switchbacks. Say one thing, mean another and by the third paragraph have the crowd baying for blood.
I find myself in the reverse position regarding Kemi Badenoch this week. I come to praise her. Seriously. And yet.
Henry Nowak asked for help, was placed in handcuffs instead and died on a Southampton pavement. The rest, as a Roman once said of a different betrayal, is history. Except it isn’t. The country is still reckoning with it.
Into this tragedy stepped Badenoch. She was impressive. She called Nowak’s death a “Stephen Lawrence moment”. She asked why Starmer and Rayner knelt for George Floyd but showed no equivalent reverence for Henry Nowak. She refused Nigel Farage’s racial inversion, correctly identifying his “rights and privileges of white people” framing as simply the BLM script with the colours swapped. She argued for a fundamental rethink of laws drafted as if Britain remains the country of the 1970s. By the standards of contemporary British political rhetoric, it was a serious, calibrated, morally coherent response.
So why is something nagging at me?
Because the Conservative Party did not merely run the Home Office for 14 years. It has been running Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary for the last 10.
I know this because I was there. As vice chair of a Conservative Association and an elected councillor in Hampshire I helped select and elect the first Police and Crime Commissioners, hosted candidate panels and watched the model being built from the inside. I believed in it then. I was not wrong about the model. I was wrong about the culture it would have to operate in.
The culture that handcuffed Henry Nowak was not imported in 2020. Macpherson planted the seed in 1999. The College of Policing, Theresa May’s well-intentioned creation, hardwired it into national policing standards from 2014. BLM, born from a 2013 hashtag and turbocharged by Floyd’s death, simply moved into an institution that had left the door open, then redecorated.
It wasn’t just policing. Universities rewrote curricula. Corporations hired chief diversity officers by the hundreds. The BBC ran unconscious bias training. The metropolitan elite embraced the new orthodoxy with the zeal of the recently converted and the intolerance of the newly devout.
Back at Tory HQ, Johnson said he didn’t believe in gestures while making them continuously. The Sewell Report arrived in 2021 and did what no politician had dared. It challenged the received wisdom on race in British institutions.
It was promptly destroyed by the very Establishment that had demanded a reckoning.
That destruction mattered in Southampton. The Tories have run Hampshire’s PCC since 2016. Donna Jones arrived in 2021 to a force already marinated in an ideology her own party had failed to challenge nationally. She won re-election in 2024 with a thumping majority. The guidance remained. The culture remained. Henry Nowak bled out on a Southampton pavement.
The PCC had the authority to rewrite the scene. But the rest of the cast: the Home Office, the College of Policing, the metropolitan commentariat, had already decided how this play would run. Donna Jones inherited a stage set she didn’t build and a script nobody in her party had the nerve to edit.
None of this is absolution. The tools existed. Jones asked the right questions this week, just five years too late.
In democracies, people get the elected officials they deserve. Before Conservative voters wail like Lady Macbeth over stains they helped make, they should reflect on that.
Kemi Badenoch is an honourable woman. Donna Jones is an honourable woman. Both are right that Nowak demands a reckoning. That the culture must change. That Farage’s racial calculus is poison, even when it names something real.
Shylock had a point before he became a villain. The grievance is real. The fuse was laid by politicians of all parties who built the multicultural settlement, celebrated it and prosecuted anyone who asked whether it was working.
The party that co-wrote this script now has a chance to rewrite it. Badenoch’s response to this tragedy has been the most compelling evidence yet that she is an authentically different kind of Conservative leader. One unafraid to name institutional failure, backed by a supporting cast that appears to be learning rather than performing.
That is not nothing. That is, perhaps, the first act of something better. Henry Nowak deserved a different play entirely. Badenoch’s role is to make sure Britain never has to stage it again.
Clive Pinder is a former elected ornament. He comes to bury no one in his search for sanity. He writes and podcasts on Substack.
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An English Parliament for the English nobody allowed to stand for parliament unless they have English heritage going back at least four generations. Otherwise we get into the mess we’re in now. Simple.
The common factor is these instances appears largely to be female. Commended police officer Lorne Castle was fired after a female rookie complained he was too rough when he tackled a youth with a knife and didn’t treat the youth with respect. The complaint was upheld by the Chief Constable (female). Nothing happened to the youth.
Is that the sound of a barrel being scraped?🙄 Now put a spin on the Henry Nowak case so you can blame it all on females. 🤦♀️
It is true. Marxist Harpies strike again.
I’ve had enough of “Anywhere” people becoming Party Leaders/Prime Ministers. If you are any “Anywhere” person you have no understanding of what the “Somewhere” people want and why they want it.
Badenough, like Sunak, is an “Anywhere” person.
I will not vote for an “Anywhere” person to become Prime Minister – under any circumstances. Whilst I would never vote Labour under any circumstances, Burnham does seem to have at least realised that he needs to present himself as a “Somewhere” person.
Farage has always understood it.
Well said! Rupert Lowe understands it even better, and sticks to his guns without flinching or backpedalling like our Nige.
As someone once said, England is not an Empty Space on the Map, to be filled in by people from anywhere on the planet.
Badenough is a former Equalities Minister. Her sticky hands are all over the DEI and No Equal Treatment policies which led directly to Henry Novak’s death.
The Not-a-Conservative-Party had 14 years to reverse at least some of the damage Blair and Brown did – to our Constitution and laws. They did nothing – except deliberately make it worse.
You don’t ask an arsonist to rebuild the house.
She and the Treacherous Tories aren’t going to get another chance to betray us.
Wrong about Farage. Wrong about Kemi. Wrong about Jones.
Other than that, absolutely correct
Clive Pinder is in complete denial with respect to Badenoch and Jones. It is not honourable to promise to implement conservative policies while at best turning a bind eye to the blatant anti white anti British two tier policing practiced by Hampshire Constabulary and police forces more widely. Donna Jones should be judged by outcomes. And on that basis she has completely failed and in so doing betrayed everybody who voted for her.
“that was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Tory Party”
Written by someone who voted Reform and still applauds much of their thinking! However, as Samuel Johnson (he of the English Dictionary) wrote, “The moment you stop using your own eyes and ears and start believing only what favours your side, you’re no longer a supporter. You’re a disciple.”
Kemi Badenough is sounding more and more like Head Girl at Saint Trinian’s Multicultural, addressing the under 13 hockey team before a game.
The problem is whatever she says – does it actually reflect the rest of the Tory mob? And, should they get into Office, will they do as they promise or not break habit and do the opposite as they have done since 210 , do what they want not what we want?
My confidence level is zero.
” Kemi Badenough is sounding more and more like Head Girl at Saint Trinian’s Multicultural, addressing the under 13 hockey team before a game. “
Brilliant!
Dear Author, what is “Farage’s racial calculus”? Sounds like a slur/dog whistle to me.
MY “racial calculus” is that I want my country (England) to be populated predominantly with white English people because this is our homeland and I am used to our culture, which comes from our ancestors and our DNA, and I want to be mainly surrounded by my own kin. That doesn’t mean I don’t value other cultures and races or that I would treat any individual differently or disdain them because of their race. What I’ve set out seems to me what every race and culture on the planet has generally felt since forever. Call me a racist; I don’t care.
It’s not race – that’s a convenient attack mechanism for those who want to serve their own interests.
It’s behaviour, culture, the change made to our whole society, way of life, institutions to accommodate mass immigration.
We were threatened with the same outcome in 1940 from mass German “immigration” – stopping the invasion was not about race.
And what it is also about is the hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Celts whose lives have been upturned, ruined, jobs and reputation lost, raped, murderer, stabbed, blown up and impoverished by immigration.
That has nothing to do with race.
And just like Net Zero there is a huge amount of public funding to be had for the providers who sell their services to the Political Industrial Race complex. Big incentive to find race and racism everywhere and keep the racism pot boiling.
I don’t think so. As for demonising Farage for telling the truth…
Clive Pinder wrote, “Badenoch’s role is to make sure Britain never has to stage it again.”
No. Nigerian Anchor Baby Olukemi Olufunto’s role is to STEP DOWN.
If heritage and last name is a requirement for competence and success, we better send half the England World Cup squad home and get out the colouring book for the England rugby team while we’re at it!
Hear, hear! Though you’ll be in a tiny minority of people who share such a sentiment in this place.
NO ONE IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES OR NORTHERN IRELAND ever demanded that Indigenous English, Scots, Welsh & Northern Irish Protestants be REPLACED BY THIRD WORLD ETHNICS on every sports team in the country! They were given no choice.
What fun is there in watching a gang of Third World Ethnics pretending to represent the English, Welsh, Scots or Irish on their national teams, and denying a chance for Indigenous youngsters to play for their own teams?
And NO ONE EVER VOTED FOR MASS THIRD WORLD IMMIGRATION, which was FORCED UPON THE WEST by Globalist Fabian Communist Traitors.
Football is football. Hardly a parallel.
Bread and circuses.. who cares. I for one will sacrifice getting to the quarterfinals of the World Cup to live in a safer society with people who look like me and share my culture. This argument is on a level with the muh spicy food one.
You are absolutely right! I’d rather watch an English sports team full of Englishmen, a Welsh team full of Welshmen, a Norwegian team full of Norsemen, a German team full of Germans, an Indian team full of Indians, a Chinese team full of Chinese, an African team full of Africans, a Brazilian team full of Brazilians, a Russian team full of Russians, an Aussie team full of Aussies, etc., all playing their best, win or lose, even if they never win any championships.
That’s why athletes like Jamaican Usain Bolt are so respected by their own Jamaican People, because he is proud to represent his own country of Jamaica and his own people.
I agree
“One unafraid to name institutional failure, backed by a supporting cast that appears to be learning rather than performing.”
Learning? Dream on, Mr Pinder.
Those who ask for power are not troubled by such things as doubt and humility, and I don’t see any evidence for the current Tory leader being an exception to this rule.
We do have her to thank for the Lord bit of Lord Toby Young, however, so there’s that.
Yes, but she didn’t do that because she cares about Freedom of Speech. She did that because her PR staff were desperately trawling around to find Popular Bandwagons for her to jump on.
Sadly, I tend to agree.
That makes a change! 🙂
Learning? How many times do we hear about “lessons must be learnt” after every repeat of the same situation?
There is no incentive for them to learn, so they never will.
Moderator, may we please have Henry’s surname corrected in the title?
Good spot. That is my error. Alas I can’t edit but will ask the team to do so.
The author was doing well until he turned his pen on Farage. Farage is the ONLY one who comes out of this with any credit. He speaks the hard truth, he stands up to the mob (in Parliament). It’s never comfortable speaking truth to power.
Farage is voicing our concerns as we watch the UK get overwhelmed by people we didn’t ask to come here. There’s never been a referendum on mass migration. Name one country in the world where multiculturalism works. (It doesn’t).
So well done Farage. Let’s hope the author can go and find a backbone.
Somewhat ironically, from everything I read about it, Israel is a success of different peoples living together. That said, I also get the impression it is more of a mult-racial success than a multu-cultural success.
As far as I can see, Israel doesn’t kowtow to minorities or self-flagellation.
And they NEVER put them in the Israeli government, or give them top posts in Israeli society.
“Within the Jewish population, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews face social and economic marginalization compared to Ashkenazi Jews. Arab citizens, while holding Israeli citizenship, often encounter disparities in education, employment, and political representation. Some minority groups maintain separate communal lives, residing in designated neighborhoods or villages”
”There have been Israeli Arab members of the Knesset ever since the first Knesset elections in 1949. The following is a list of the 102 past and present members. Some Israeli Druze dispute the label “Arab” and consider Druze to be a separate ethnic group. However, because they speak Arabic as their first language they are still included in this list.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_members_of_the_Knesset
’10 facts about Arabs in Israel’s parliament’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAteADS0Tjs ( 3mins )
Israel is a democracy. How on earth can that be possible if they are banning citizens from entering specific sectors of society based on protected characteristics such as religion?
”Judge Khaled Kabub on Monday became the first Muslim appointed to Israel’s Supreme Court. All previous Arab Israeli justices on the 15-member court have been Christians.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/khaled-kabub-sworn-in-as-supreme-courts-first-muslim-justice/
No Ethnic African, Ethnic Oriental, or Ethnic Indian Subcontinental would ever be allowed to represent Israel on the world stage as its LEADER.
And that is as it SHOULD BE, because the Jewish People of Israel have every right to have an Ethno-Religious State.
SO DO WE IN THE WEST. Get it through your heads.
Now tell the Fake Catholic Ethnic African Yoruba Tribal Nigerian Woman that she can be “The New Golda Meir”, and see how that goes down with the Israeli People.
You actually mean “the Fake Catholic Ethnic African Yoruba Tribal Nigerian Princess“
Yes, because she is a member of the Yoruba ROYAL ADEGOKE CLAN, and they all claim to be princes or princesses, which is why she showed her true attitude when she complained that Tory Party members who wanted her to step down were “PLOTTING REGICIDE” against her!!!
The thing is, in Ethnic European civilization, you can’t be a real princess unless your dad is a king, or husband is a prince, or heir to the throne… and hers isn’t.
NOT ONE ISRAELI LEADER HAS EVER BEEN ANYTHING OTHER THAN JEWISH, and mostly Ashkenazi rather than Sephardic.
Well, Jews are a distinct mono-racial, monocultural group. The difference is national, in that Jews migrating to Israel came/come from different Countries.
There is an Arab population which is small minority and integrated… not the Palestinians.
Farage was making the point – contrast and compare – of two-tier institutional bias, and articulating what most “ordinary” people think.
Badenough is just as insensitive to the people and tone deaf as the Starmer automaton.
Uniparty lives!
As a Reform voter and Farage admirer, I’m pleased you liked most of it, which in today’s politics counts as a signed peace treaty.
My point wasn’t that Farage is wrong about the grievance. Often he isn’t. It was that once you start converting every legitimate complaint into a racial stocktake, you cease to be the brave chap saying the unsayable and become the bore at the end of the bar muttering darkly about “them.”
Farage knows the difference. On his better days he’s brilliant at it. On his worse days he sounds like a man who’s discovered a real problem and then blamed it on the colour chart.
Rupert Lowe is clearly ruffling his feathers.
Another insinuation that Farage is a closet racist. Perhaps he is, but perhaps you could cite some evidence for this?
Who cares?
I’m giving the author the benefit of the doubt and would like his thoughts
Your account bears no resemblance to Farage’s behaviour the other day.
But it’s not every legitimate complaint. This is a humdinger, with two tier policing writ large. If he didn’t comment this time, he might as well cancel himself. Farage has tried ever so hard not to give the MSM ammunition, so much so that he’s left a gap for Restore.
I would suggest that if you really ARE a true Reform supporter, you give Farage 100% support against the true racists on the left.
“The author was doing well until he turned his pen on Farage” and thus he exposed the advanced cognitive decline of the Tory hierarchy.
By my previous comments, I’m far from being Mr Farage’s fan, but do they not realise that what Reform needs to win is this lady as a leader and either Starmer or Burnham opposite.
For God’s sake, can’t they find somebody, anybody who is a true Conservative?
Recently, a young bride missed her dead dad so much that she created a hologram of him standing next to her at the ceremony. If they are so severely depleted of talent, can’t they create an AI-synthetic Maggie; they’ll have much better chance than this total fake.
“The author was doing well until he turned his pen on Farage” and thus he exposed the advanced cognitive decline of the Tory hierarchy.
By my previous comments, I’m far from being Mr Farage’s fan, but do they not realise that what Reform needs to win is this lady as a leader and either Starmer or Burnham opposite.
For God’s sake, can’t they find somebody, anybody who is a true Conservative?
Recently, a young bride missed her dead dad so much that she created a hologram of him standing next to her at the ceremony. If they are so severely depleted of talent, can’t they create an AI-synthetic Maggie; they’ll have much better chance than this total fake.
There will be no forgiveness from me for the Fake Conservative Party. Failure and betrayal on that scale must be severely punished otherwise democratic politics is a meaningless sham. Apart from Thatcher name an administration that pushed back in any significant way against the rise of bureaucratic socialism.
As for “well meaning”, I don’t pretend to know what everyone’s real motivations are but I am done with well meaning people. In my experience they turn out to be fascists/tyrants/communists/despots/dictators/Nazis choose your own term.
By the way, the principal tragedy of Mr Nowak is that he was murdered by a mad/evil (take your pick) man. Nobody is directly responsible for that apart from the murderer.
“There will be no forgiveness from me for the Fake Conservative Party.”
From me neither.
They have no credibility left.
Suella Braverman hit the nail on the head: they made promises without the slightest intention of keeping them. In other words, lied.
Suella Braverman accused of fresh ministerial code breaches after failing to disclose Rwanda links | The Independent
“Suella Braverman is facing fresh allegations of ministerial code breaches over her failure to formally disclose years of previous work with the Rwandan government.”
“The home secretary CO-FOUNDED a charity called the AFRICA JUSTICE FOUNDATION with CHERIE BLAIR, which trained Rwandan government lawyers between 2010 and 2015.”
“Several people the charity worked with are now key members of President Paul Kagame’s government and are involved in the UK’s £140m deal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.”
BadenTeeth the Nigerian did not care about Nowak, so not sure what the point is here. She has never criticised the police nor woke theologies for this tragedy. She is Black, it is an open question how literate she is about things English. I view her as a tool – a rather dull one. She is a DEI hire and a failure. She is part of the uniparty. The question posed here answers itself – she could care less about 9 tier policing, the rapes of white girls by Muslims or Nowak. She will double down and support what the uniparty want.
I was born and raised in Nigeria too, which I mention only because it seems relevant to you. The rest of us were discussing policing and whether The Tories can reform.
It should also be said that I had no idea skin colour determined your grasp of English culture. I must have missed the memo explaining how pigmentation affects your ability to understand Shakespeare, queue properly and complain about the weather.
On that note the suggestion that being Black makes one illiterate about things English will come as news to Shakespeare. He was, admittedly, white. Othello, however, had some very compelling things to say on the subject of prejudice. Still does.
Race at a societal level matters, as evidenced by the vastly different outcomes we see in countries around the world. And race is not just about skin pigmentation. I’m an ethnonationalist when it comes to what our immigration policy should have been. Too late now- England is finished in the long term.
You are an Ethnic European born in Nigeria to Ethnic European parents who sent you to an ENGLISH BOARDING SCHOOL at 8 years old, reportedly.
You have vast experience all around the world with BRANDING and MARKETING, so maybe it was you who advised the Nigerian Anchor Baby to wear Royal Blue as often as possible, to make Indigenous British People think she was Margaret Thatcher?
May I suggest that you go to Israel and tell them they need to replace Jewish Netanyahu with a Fake Catholic Nigerian Woman whose wealthy Nigerian mother flew to the UK when heavily pregnant, deposited her egg like some kind of wasp on British soil, in order to claim British Nationality for the sprog, then immediately took her Nigerian Sprog back to Nigeria to raise amongst HER OWN YORUBA TRIBE, ROYAL ADEGOKE CLAN, AND ETHNIC AFRICAN PEOPLE. Then later the wealthy Nigerian mother took the sprog to live with her in the US, where she had been given a high academic position, despite criticizing the Yanks for being racist, then the wealthy sprog decided she wanted to go to high school in Britain, marry an Ethnic European, and “rule” over the Indigenous Brits as… Read more »
And as for Othello, don’t hold up an Ethnic African Racist who murdered his Ethnic European wife out of JEALOUSY OF THE WHITE MAN, as some kind of role model for Ethnic Europeans to admire.
You did say in one interview that the one person you would most like to have met is the Ethnic African Terrorist Nelson Mandela, later raised to god-like status by Weedy Wet Liberals like you.
Desdemona was an idiot to marry him in the first place!
One other thought Ferd…..If your idea of Englishness depends on skinpigment, you may have missed the awkward little detail that the founding figure of Judeo-Christian culture was, how shall we put this delicately, not a white bloke from Surrey.
Said the Atheist Pinder.
There is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian Culture”, as any honest rabbi will tell you, and ANGLO-SAXONS WERE ETHNIC EUROPEANS = WHITE PEOPLE, who have every right to resist being exterminated, and to live in peace amongst their own Ethnic Group.
Are you meant to be famous or are you reasonably well known? Shall we put this delicately: if so, it clearly isn’t for your intelligence.
This is exactly what the problem is with the “conservative” party and its leader.
Kemi Badenoch collaborated in and actively supported, promoted – and probably benefited from – the entire woke, diversity, equality and inclusion groupthink that resulted in this tragedy.
It would be extremely naive to believe that the Conservative Party would be any different if they somehow gained power again.
During their 14 years in power, there was not s single woke policy that the Conservatives did not enthusiastically embrace. If anything, they were ashamed of not being even more woke.
Mass migration, anti-white, anti-male legislation, LGBTQ worship, blindful ignorance of Muslim rape gangs, support for BLM, kissing the arse of Greta Thunberg – you name it, they supported it.
I seriously question whether any political party will be able to change anything of substance.
This is what is going to happen with this Henry Novak incident. The establishment will ride it out until it passes. They are learning literally nothing from this – other than how to keep people quiet – because their ideology hasn’t shifted an inch. They continue to believe in all their DEI and ESG and have zero intention of taking even half a step back from any of it.
The difference between the parties are those that believe in all this crap and those that don’t but will fail miserably to change any of it, if they even try.
Mrs. Badenough stood in the HoC to congratulate her government for loosening the visa requirements.
Wow! I hadn’t heard that— what shameless hypocrites these politicians are!