Two-tier policing is no right-wing myth – Henry Nowak proves it

Britain’s political establishment has never responded well to the accusation of a ‘two-tier’ police or justice system. A Home Office report last year called it a ‘right-wing extremist narrative’. In 2024, amid the Southport riots, then Met commissioner Mark Rowley tried to snatch the microphone of a reporter just for posing the question.

This week, in which headlines have been dominated by the murder of Henry Nowak, the political class has once again been on the defensive.

‘There is no such thing as two-tier policing’, a spokesman for Keir Starmer said on Monday. ‘And we are categorical that [police] must treat everyone equally regardless of their ethnicity.’ Starmer was even more emphatic in the House of Commons on Wednesday. He described Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as ‘unforgiveable’ for stating that it was ‘clear to growing millions… that we’re living under two-tier policing’. Parm Sandhu, a former chief superintendent of the Met and current director of the London Policing College, was wheeled out to reinforce the prime minister’s views. ‘I do not accept that at all’, Sandhu said, when asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether two-tier policing existed. ‘They do not base [decisions] on the skin colour of the individuals in front of them.’

These questions are being asked – again – because of the disturbing circumstances that surrounded the death of 18-year-old Nowak, who was murdered in Southampton in December. Nowak was stabbed four times by Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man. Yet it was Nowak, rather than Digwa, who was placed under arrest when officers arrived at the scene. The only reason for arresting Nowak, who had collapsed in a driveway by the time police arrived, seems to be that Digwa told police that Nowak was a ‘racist’.

Even before Nowak’s murder, the existence of two-tier policing was increasingly clear. In fact, police authorities have more or less admitted to it. In March 2025, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) published the ‘Police Anti-Racism Commitment’, which directs officers to ‘respond to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm’. This, it is at pains to say, ‘does not mean treating everyone “the same” or being “colour-blind” (racial equality)’. The NPCC couldn’t be any clearer: police should, when necessary, change their conduct according to the ethnicity or race of whoever they’re dealing with.

The Southampton and Isle of Wight Constabulary has produced a similarly revealing document. Its own ‘Race Action Plan’ described the killing of African American George Floyd in 2020 as a ‘pivotal moment’, instructing officers to be ‘anti-racist’ in all that they do. It also encourages officers to use a ‘reform or explain approach’ to ethnic minorities and to ‘improve outcomes and support for ethnic-minority victims of crimes’. Obviously, this does not support handcuffing a teenager who was bleeding to death. But it has clearly shaped an outlook in which the police are all too willing to ignore the suffering of a dying man in an effort to be ‘anti-racist in all that [the police] does’.

We would still know that two-tier policing exists, even if the authorities weren’t publishing their own manuals on it. The police response to the Southport riots in the summer of 2024 provides the most telling example. The authorities were unrelenting in their clampdown, arresting and charging hundreds of those involved, fasttracking them through the courts. Given the wanton destruction involved, it was an understandable approach to restore public order.

Yet the police behaved very differently just two weeks earlier. Rioting had engulfed the very ‘diverse’ district of Harehills in Leeds, after social services had tried to take a Roma child into care. A police car was torched and a bus was overturned. The police response was virtually non-existent. It looked as if they had effectively decided to leave the rioters to it, in the hope they would tire themselves out.

Then we have the grooming-gangs scandal. That the perpetrators of these crimes were predominantly Pakistani Muslims, and the victims white girls, was a fact that was apparently well known to police. But, as Baroness Louise Casey’s report established in 2025, the police failed to act principally out of fear of being labelled ‘racist’.

Two-tier justice is a poison in the body politic. It is eroding trust in the police and fomenting racial antagonism. And yet Keir Starmer and the rest of the establishment continue to deny its existence, while demonising all those drawing attention to it. Their complacency is tearing the country apart.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.