Bodycam footage shows Henry Nowak, 18, handcuffed and dying on a Southampton pavement after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa – a killer who falsely claimed he was the victim of a racist attack. That footage, released after Digwa was jailed for life, ignited violent protests and a fierce debate about policing and knife laws in the UK. Then JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the murder on the “mass invasion of migrants” and called for “righteous anger”. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy responded by picking up the phone.
Lammy told the BBC he rang Vance on Saturday and told him he was “wrong”. The killing, Lammy said, “has got nothing to do with mass migration”. Digwa, who was born in the UK and is British, had claimed he was carrying the blade for religious reasons linked to his Sikh faith. After the call, Lammy described their conversation as “robust” but “agreeable”, adding that he had reminded Vance that Nowak’s family had “called for calm”. The two men, who have formed an unlikely friendship over the years – Vance and his family stayed at Lammy’s grace-and-favour home, Chevening, in Kent last summer – remain “colleagues and friends”, Lammy said.
“David Lammy told US VP JD Vance his comments linking Henry Nowak's murder to migration were 'wrong'.”
Vance had written on X on Friday that Nowak died “the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him”. He argued the teenager would still be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”. Lammy rejected that “caricature” of Western civilisation in decline. Downing Street also hit out at those “seeking to stir up division”, while No 10 distanced itself from Vance’s framing.
Nowak’s father, Mark, had already appealed for calm outside court after the sentencing, saying: “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.” In the House of Lords, Doreen Lawrence reminded peers that a family’s grief should not be turned into a political weapon. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating the actions of officers who handcuffed Nowak as he lay dying – a scene that has shocked many who have seen the footage. The Conservative shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, condemned in Parliament “the dangerous ideology of so-called anti-racism”, which he said had enshrined differential treatment of suspects by race in police guidance. But for Nowak’s family, the question remains whether any political narrative can deliver the accountability they seek.