Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has told US Vice-President JD Vance he was “wrong” to blame the murder of teenager Henry Nowak on a “mass invasion of migrants” – a direct challenge to an extraordinary intervention from the White House.
Lammy said he called Vance on Saturday to deliver the rebuke after the vice-president posted on X that Nowak 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”. Vance added that the “only response” was “righteous anger”.
“David Lammy told JD Vance he was wrong to blame Henry Nowak's murder on mass migration in a phone call on Saturday.”
“I told him he was wrong,” Lammy told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. The justice secretary said he reminded Vance that Nowak’s family had “called for calm” – a reference to the teenager’s father Mark’s plea outside court that his son’s death should not “be used to create further division, hatred or tension”.
Lammy said the killing “has got nothing to do with mass migration”. Vickrum Digwa, who stabbed Nowak to death with a 21cm blade in Southampton last December, is British and was born in the UK. He was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after falsely claiming he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence.
“I said, ‘Look, Mr Vice-President, you’re wrong about this,’ and it’s also the case that actually murder is coming down in the United Kingdom,” Lammy told Sky News, adding that he also urged Vance that it was “not helpful to tweet in this way” given the family’s wishes.
The call, which Lammy described as “robust” but “agreeable”, comes after Downing Street hit out at “people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division”. A No 10 spokesman said the Nowak family had made clear they did not want his death used “to create further division”.
The row has been fuelled by the release of bodycam footage showing police handcuffing Nowak as he lay dying after Digwa falsely claimed to be the victim of a racist attack. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating the officers’ behaviour, and an inquest jury is to consider next year whether any “act or omission” by police contributed to his death.
The debate has also touched on knife laws. Lammy said Sikhs’ “privilege” to carry a blade for religious reasons “can be taken away” if it no longer commands public confidence, but noted there was “doubt as to whether this was religious” in Digwa’s case. He compared the privilege to the ability to watch from the public gallery of the House of Commons without glass – a freedom withdrawn due to “very poor behaviour”.
Lammy acknowledged he and Vance “remain colleagues and friends” despite the disagreement. The pair’s unlikely friendship began when Lammy was an opposition MP and Vance had just been elected to the US Senate, and Vance and his family stayed at Lammy’s grace-and-favour home last summer.
But the deputy prime minister made clear he would not back down. “I disagree with him,” he said. “This has got nothing to do with mass migration.”