The far right want this to be Britain’s ‘George Floyd moment’ – they’re wrong

In the sense that it has rightly provoked much outrage, a burning sense of injustice and some civil disturbance, you can see parallels between the murders of Henry Nowak and George Floyd.

Six years to the week that riots erupted in Bristol after that awful killing in America, the words “I can’t breathe” that Henry desperately uttered in his final moments carry particular emotional force and a terrible echo of Floyd’s death.

There are racial dimensions in both, which will always have the potential to provoke disquiet. Where figures such as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson seek to exploit tragic deaths, the possibility of violence can become very real, and what understandable anger about Henry’s death is wilfully converted into “pure cold rage” – a self-fulfilling prophecy in the most dishonourable tradition.

Of course, Farage should have called for calm and for people to wait until there is a further investigation into the behaviour of the police on the night of the murder. He could also have acknowledged that, at least to some extent, there has been justice for Henry – his murderer got life, and, contrary to some suggestions, he was not dealt with leniently.

Fortunately, not every politician is like Farage or Robinson, and not every British citizen thinks the way to achieve justice for a murder victim is to chuck wheelie bins at police officers. Keir Starmer, Shabana Mahmood, Kemi Badenoch and others, including even Rupert Lowe, leader of the extreme Restore Britain party, condemned Farage’s attempt to defy the wishes of Henry’s family and to make political capital out of the family’s grief.

In his brief hate-infused video, Farage pivoted from praising the “extraordinarily dignified” response of Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, to saying, in effect, that “the rest of us” should do something about our cold rage. That is why Farage slyly linked the murder to some complete non-sequiturs about “anti-white” racism, “proof” of a two-tier society and “mass immigration”. Other similar tragedies – including the various antisemitic incidents, Southport murders, the Calacone case, the Huntingdon train attacks, terrorism and the death of Lee Rigby – have been similarly weaponised by the far right.

The murder of Henry Nowak doesn’t prove any of the things Farage claims it does. There is no clear evidence, at least yet, about what went wrong with the police response, and whether that is really down to the guidelines on race and policing – that is now under calm and sober investigation. The same goes for the supposed link to immigration – and to the wider Sikh community. It is just as absurd as blaming every Muslim person for the Manchester Arena bombing, or every police officer in the country for whatever those who attended Henry’s murder scene did wrong.

I happen to think most people can see what Farage is up to and see right through it. He is trailing in the Makerfield by-election polls because he put up a duff candidate again, and, broadly, finds himself outflanked by “ethnonationalists” on his right. While he is too fastidious to endorse Robinson publicly, he knows the latter’s Unite the Kingdom movement is very useful for stirring up a bogus sense of emergency and persecution among white communities who feel discriminated against. The British are still realistic enough to understand that burning refugee hotels or injuring police officers isn’t going to deliver social justice and make the economy grow faster.

Maybe the police could apply their guidelines better, or maybe there will always be operational errors – but a riot won’t improve things. We’ve met the likes of Farage, Robinson and Lowe before, and we know they don’t have the answers. In fact, they’re the real problem.