Emma Webber brought one of her son's old T-shirts to the hearings into how he died. Her son Barney, 19, and his friend Grace O'Malley-Kumar were fatally stabbed by Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic recently discharged from hospital. Calocane also killed 65-year-old school caretaker Ian Coates. Webber's quest for a public inquiry into how Calocane was free to kill is now being co-opted by the right, says Hinsliff.
This week, shadow home secretary Chris Philp argued that doctors hesitated to section Calocane (who is black) partly due to concerns over disproportionately high section rates for black men, leading directly to the murders. Shadow equalities secretary Claire Coutinho tweeted that the Nottingham, Southport, and Manchester Arena killings were evidence of racism being 'weaponised in public services.'
Hinsliff writes that 'woke kills' is the same message Nigel Farage is pumping out, alongside threats to repeal anti-discrimination law if Reform UK gets elected. She argues that the picture is too fuzzy for responsible politicians to be pouring petrol on bonfires. 'If any professional has been too squeamish, then the takeaway is that kneejerk assumptions either way are dangerous,' she writes. 'The lesson of Henry Nowak's awful death is not that Stephen Lawrence's has somehow ceased to matter, but that lessons must be learned from both.'