Losing support to Restore, Farage seizes a golden opportunity to bring racists back into the fold | John Crace

Mark Nowak had asked for his son’s murder not to be used to spread division. But Nige is just not the kind of guy to miss out

T he email invitation arrived shortly after 7am. Nigel Farage would be making an “address to the nation” an hour later. The grandiosity. The self-importance. An address to the nation is something usually delivered by the monarch or the prime minister during an emergency. Not from a leader of a political party with just eight MPs.

There again, pomposity is now Nige’s last resort. A few months ago, we would all have been invited to a press conference in central London. Now he is a virtual prisoner in his own home. Afraid to subject himself to awkward questions about the £5m he says he was “gifted” from a Thai crypto billionaire. So Reform is effectively leaderless. All we get to see of Nige is the occasional video from an indeterminate location. He is a man determined not to be found by anyone.

The feed cut in. This time he appeared to be in the middle of a field. As many of us had guessed, it turned out he wanted to talk about the brutal murder of Henry Nowak last December. An 18-year-old man who was handcuffed by the police as he lay dying after the killer stabbed him and falsely accused him of racism.

After the court had delivered its verdict on Monday, Henry’s father had given a dignified and moving statement. He asked that politicians not use his son’s death as a chance to promote their own agendas. “We don’t want his death used to create further division, hatred or tension,” Mark Nowak said.

All of which was water off a duck’s back to Farage. Because Nige is just not the kind of guy to miss out. Who cared what Henry’s dad had to say? Their tragedy was just their tragedy. Farage wasn’t going to let such a golden opportunity go to waste.

Division, hatred and tension? Bring them on. They were his life blood. He can’t survive without them. And what better time to use them then now? Just lately Reform has been losing support to Restore in the Makerfield byelection . Now was the time to try to bring the 3% of the country who are out-and-out racists back into the fold. Time to let the bigots know that he hadn’t gone soft.

Farage began by saying he was going to play the body-cam footage of Henry’s last moments. Thankfully, he didn’t realise there had been a technical glitch and that all we could see was footage of Nige continuing to look gormless in a field. Farage then repeated Henry’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, comparing them to George Floyd, whom he described as a “career criminal”. Only there was no comparison. Floyd was murdered by a police officer. Nowak was murdered by Vickrum Digwa, a young Sikh man who was obsessed with knives.