JD Vance's Britain doesn't exist

The problem is not just the exploitation of a tragedy — it is the fictional picture of Britain that American populists increasingly rely upon.

“We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension… This is not a case about Sikhism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.”

- Family of Henry Nowak, 1 June

“Henry Nowak died the same way a civilisation dies. Abandoned. Handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

- JD Vance, X, 5 June

The Nowak family’s wish was never going to be respected: the brutal truth is that his death was just too politically rich not to exploit. Elon Musk had long been demanding the release of the police bodycam video shown to the court of Henry’s last moments. It would be Twitter dynamite, as galvanising for the digital right as George Floyd was for the BLM-left. Nothing solicits a more visceral human reaction than seeing, hearing a dying man cuffed by police. Certain politicians will always seek to traffic in atrocity, to exploit and direct such emotions. JD Vance very much included.

Vance, the algorithm and the British Gotham

To frame the murder in racial terms - the result of immigration, rather than criminality - is precisely what Henry’s family begged politicians not to do. But doing so is vital for JD Vance’s overall message: that British civilisation is somehow under attack because “the mass invasion of migrants” and their children has left streets full of murderers and, even, a civilisational threat. The problem is that Vance and those on the populist right who promote “Britain is Broken” narrative cannot point to actual crime figures because they show that while the immigrant population has doubled, crime has actually halved.

JD Vance’s style of politics relies on building ever-refreshed narratives of conflict, keeping rage (and fear) alight. A glance at the US government website, Aliens (‘they walk among us’) gives a sense of this vibe. Vance seeks to lead the MAGA tribe when Trump goes. They want to know that “London has fallen,” that Europe is ablaze and that Britain is now a dumpster-fire of a country with civilisation is being “erased” - all because of immigration, enabled by leftists. The point about ‘civilisation’ being under threat is the new war-cry of Europe’s hard right. First it was about Muslims. It has now widened to Sikhs.

Vance presents a fake version of Britain as a cautionary tale for America. The barbarians are inside the European gates, and Henry Nowak’s death is an example of what happens when their children run amok! Pete Hegseth was at it in his D-Day speech; Reform UK also draws this ‘invasion’ military analogy. Your country is being attacked, your women and children defiled: who will defend? This isn’t politics as we commonly understand it, but a call to arms. Now promoted by a new media ecosystem, as desperate for new material as MAGA. Twitter nativist accounts like the one Vance cited scour Europe for examples of migrant crime and push them out to fuel the narrative of racial conflict or migrant vs native clashes.

Vance calls for “righteous anger;” Nigel Farage for “cold rage.” Both now speak the language of racial conflict: between migrants and, now, the children of migrants. An attack of the white majority by the criminal minority whose very presence embodies the betrayal of a country by its elites. The ‘broken’ country Reform speaks of, the dumpster-fire that JD Vance points to, bears no more resemblance to the UK than Gotham City does to New York. But these gentlemen and their media allies are forever building up their picture of British Gotham with fake narratives, fake stats, made-up think tanks and books with concocted quotes. It depends on deceit.

I have written my Times column about the lies being told about the Nowak murder - and the industrial-scale attempt to concoct fake narratives. I’d like to expand some of the points and share the data I researched in my column (all in my data library, here).

If what JD Vance said about Britain and migration was even halfway true, the post-2000 immigration surge would have sent our crime through the roof. Instead, it has halved. Henry Nowak’s murder was tragic, harrowing, sickening - but not part of a rising trend. In fact, in this country - where immigrants make up one in five of workers - murders are hovering at a 40-year low in absolute terms and a 50-year low when population-adjusted.

Some argue that the decline of murder is a technicality: that medical advances means they don’t die. I debated Zia Yusuf on Monday and he he paraphrased me as saying “come to London, you’ll be stabbed but thanks to our amazing emergency services you have a better chance of surviving.”

First, here are the figures for London murder: at the lowest in decades. Probably centuries, when you think of what came before. Note the under-25 tab.

And to Yusuf’s point - you’re not dying because the NHS is stitching you up? Well, the NHS keeps records of those admitted for knife crime (‘assault by sharp objects’). I updated it to take in the latest. It shows knife casualties at the lowest level since records began 27 years ago. Again, the opposite to the picture that Vance paints:-

It’s not just knife crime. When someone is assaulted and admitted to hospital, the NHS records it. The UK’s NHS model means we have very good data on this: you can mine it from their website. Again, we see hospital admissions for assault hovering at a multi-decade low.

You can click on the above to get ‘injury by bodily force’, by ‘blunt object’ etc: same trend. And let’s remember that one in four NHS staff who serve the country’s sick and injured are immigrants. The period of mass migration has coincided with an unprecedented drop in violent crime. Never have our streets been more racially mixed, it’s true. But seldom have they been safer to walk down. Surveys show women, in particular, say they feel markedly safer walking the streets than they did 30 years ago.

And yes, most crimes are not reported to the police. That’s why the Crime Survey of England & Wales asks 35,000 households to talk about their experience of crime: to give a consistent picture, pick up unreported crime. The resulting picture makes a mockery of the JD Vance caricature.

Click on the ‘police recorded’ tab and you’ll see a different picture - and here’s the paradox. Better policing means a greater share of crimes are reported. As the situation improves there are more interceptions, people are more confident in reporting crime. If more people were actually being stabbed, assaulted or killed, we’d see it in the hospital or murder figures. These figures show what the crime survey shows: violence roughly halving over the 20 years where the migrant population has doubled.

The switch from immigration to race

Vance is highly intelligent and strategic: unlike Trump he chooses words carefully. Nowak, he said, would still be alive today “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

This is not a complaint about today’s immigration. Vickrum Digwa was born here. Vance, like Farage, has switched the criticism to those already here. Both seem to be anticipating how to keep the fight going when migration is under control - as it now is in the UK.

So Vance talks about the threat to the country of migrants’ children: now framed as threats because of their bloodline, not their actions. Only here, Vance says, because the “few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.” Migration framed as “invasion,” and the problem goes back “generations”. A new argument, with new implications.

This is why we see papers like the Jewish News now defend Muslims: they see how the argument is shifting. They know what happens when this crowd gets their boots on. First it was the Muslims. Now, the Sikhs. Who do we think might be next? Rupert Lowe, the Reform pace-setter, has already started on Kosher meat. How long until Judaeo is dropped from the demands to protect Europe’s ‘Judaeo-Christian heritage?’.

Even on racial grounds, Vance’s narrative collapses. If you look at the arrest rate by ethnicity - a poor proxy for crime as it doesn’t adjust for social factors - it shows Indians significantly below whites.

What Henry Nowak’s murder reminds us is how far we still have to go. His attacker should never have been allowed to walk around Southampton with a massive knife: the law needs to be clarified so police know to reject false claims of religious exemption. Snatch crime is surging, as is shoplifting: if Vance wanted to talk about rising acquisitive crime he’d have a point. Sexual offences are not experiencing the same trend: there is no surge, but no collapse either.

Vance needs to tell his MAGA base that Britain is a migrant-addled criminal hellhole - and if they’re not careful, America will be too. MAGA politics means selling a worldview, rather than solutions. A dystopia needs victims and villains. This non-stop media circus needs recruits: new people to be angry at. More causes for the currency Vance incites:

Imagine if a UK Prime Minister had issued a statement after George Floyd’s death demanding Americans take to the streets over policing. Or after Rodney King. Or Michael Brown. Or Eric Garner. It would be seen as extraordinary overreach - a foreign leader attempting to promote domestic unrest on a false basis. The Swedes now have a ‘Psychological Defence Unit’ to deal with foreign powers who use fake news to sow internal division: it recognises that these fake, viral claims are assaults on the national fabric. And need to be responded to quickly with the cold, hard truth.

Vance is attacking a Britain that does not exist. Our islands are not seething with racial tension; polls show only one in four buy Farage’s ‘two-tier policing’ line. I suspect his departure this week from anti-migration politics into racial politics will prove a misjudgement. Yes, they won Twitter; by playing the race card they won attention. But I suspect lost most of the country,

Britain is not a place where people who look affrighted or askance at colleagues, neighbours and countrymen who have different faiths or skin colour. My own hunch is that MAGA is obsessed with Britain because we are living rejection of this thesis: a country that has, in Britishness, a unifying theme that people of all faiths, ethnicities and skin colours can unite around. Britain’s story is the opposite of what JD Vance says it is.

I’d like to close with the final paragraph of my Times column:-

Vance has one thing right: there is such a thing as 'civilisational decline’. A national debate that cannot defend truth when facts are distorted will eventually find itself governed by whichever outrage spreads fastest. “This is not a case about Sikhism,” said Nowak’s family. “This is not a case about racism. This is about murder.” It is hard to imagine a clearer statement of what was lost amid the noise.