Looking back on your life, and the millions of interactions you have had with others, can you ever recall getting things horribly wrong? I suspect most of us have been there. Retrospectively, it can be impossible to figure out why you spoke or acted in the way you did; something went awry with the logic circuits in your brain.

Hopefully the consequences weren’t too serious. Others forgave and you could learn and move on. In time, the incident might even have led to an amusing anecdote. But sadly it doesn’t always work out well.

I’m thinking about Henry Nowak’s murder, and specifically the way that the police dealt with it. The enquiry into the officers’ action that night is ongoing. But it is obvious that they got things terribly wrong. It’s likely that they are going to face very significant consequences.

So I am probably in a tiny minority when I express sympathy with them. That night their brain algorithms misfunctioned badly. But did they go on duty with the intention of arresting a fatally injured young man, while the murderer gloated? Were they so callous that they handcuffed and cautioned him, knowing that those were the last words he would hear in this life? Frankly, I doubt it.

I believe that their thought processes had been influenced such that sooner or later warped logic would lead to a catastrophic outcome. The Macpherson (1999) and Casey (2023) Reports declared that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, amongst other faults. Following the awful death of George Floyd (in a different country) the Black Lives Matter movement swept the world. Virtue signallers jumped on the bandwagon, publicly “taking the knee”, and in this country it turbocharged a willing Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity industry.

If we couple that with woolly headed liberal thinking (the idiotic “Centrist Dad” nonsense), demanding a permanent sense of shame for our history, white privilege etc, where do we find ourselves?

A place where public servants (in this case young police officers) aren’t looking at the world in front of them, but instead looking over their shoulder, terrified of a career ending accusation of racism from the armchair DEI brigade. Common sense is outlawed along with independent thinking. Warped logic takes over, and a man who has been fatally stabbed spends his dying moments being arrested and cautioned.

After the 2024 General Election, I expressed anxiety that we were in danger of descending into sectarianism. Those fears were made worse within a month, following the Southport murders and subsequent disturbances. Far too many politicians have failed to grasp what’s going on here. Or if they have they don’t have the courage to address the issue. Or worse still, they seek to exploit the situation for their own ends.

Kemi Badenoch is more likely to have suffered racism than many of our leading politicians. So when she says that Britain is not a racist country and that the police are not institutionally racist it is at least worth listening to her. In pointing out that All Lives Matter, and demanding that justice be blind and apply equally to all, she outlines a better future; a multiracial country but not a multicultural one.

Is there hope? It is easy to find the video from February this year of a young female police officer dealing with a potentially ugly incident in Whitechapel, East London. An evangelical Christian decided to start preaching just outside a mosque, to the consternation of some young Muslim men. The hot heads were trying to whip up anger. And she just calmly pointed out that he was exercising his right to free speech (which they too enjoyed), and that if they didn’t like what he was saying they were totally free to ignore him and walk on by. When one claimed it was a Muslim Area, she explained that there is no such thing in this country.

Common sense. One law applied without fear or favour. Visibly even handed. If a young PC can get it, our political leaders have no excuses.