As seen in the Telegraph

Two thoughts on the sad and controversial death of Henry Nowak. The first is about Kemi. Wow. She really is The One. While Nigel Farage has angrily stomped about, demanding certain laws and policies be changed to stop something like that happening again, Mrs Badenoch instead forensically called for people to be mindful of their language. Mummy has done it again.

Little do they know that until 2020 there were no racial tensions in this country at all

And here is thought two: I despise Americans, and the Americanisation of our culture. Nowak’s death has opened the floodgates to all sorts of barking, ill-informed commentary from the Yanks about this seat of Mars. Venerable British customs like handcuffing teenagers who have just been stabbed have come under sustained attack. Radical, lunatic American libertarians now ask why we arrest more people for speech crimes per annum than the Russian Federation – when they should really be wondering why their squalid, car-mad urban environments are bereft of tree-lined avenues, pleasant cafés and inviting bathhouses (as is the European style).

Then there is J.D. Vance. For those of you normal and nice enough not to have an account on Twitter (I refuse to say ‘X’), the Vice-President accused our bobbies on the beat of having shown indifference to Nowak’s fate. This is certainly not the same Vance who wrote Hillbilly Elegy about his impoverished childhood – I much preferred the man when he confined himself to abstract cries for help à la the delightfully Sisyphean task of improving educational outcomes for white working-class boys.

Vance, like all Americans, insists on looking at this incident through a racial lens, as if Britain was the country of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. Little do they know that until 2020 there were absolutely no racial tensions in this country at all. Our world-beating minorities doffed their caps to the Queen, played cricket, knelt in the pews and bawled out the national anthem in unison! Our troubles began only when they saw the images of George Floyd being murdered by an American police officer. Those were the halcyon days that Empress Badenoch will bring back as soon as she has finished her apprenticeship as leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition.

Yet in spite of all this, Donald Trump’s deputy still has the gall to suggest that the wanton murder of a teenager by a young Sikh man, while in police handcuffs, might be evidence that Britain has taken a step down the wrong path. When I read his words, I felt the Charles de Gaulle within me stir. Like de Gaulle, I have little time for foreigners who interfere in our affairs. If de Gaulle were alive today and leading Britain, I have no doubt that he would be threatening the United States with a nuclear exchange until they promised to stop talking about how racially motivated rape gangs are a fact of life in parts of the country and have been for decades. He would simply solve the problem by asking other people to ignore it, before making a passionate case against the Assisted Dying Bill, and then leading a spirited campaign to save Gentleman’s Relish.

Well, one can dream. In the meantime, Kemi will do nicely. As l’affaire du Nowak was raging last week, I watched the Tory leader at Prime Minister’s Questions, in which she forensically ducked the entire issue and instead asked Sir Keir Starmer about tax policy. Take that, Yanks! My loyal bichon frisé Wordsworth was hopping up and down with excitement as Farage was rightly rebuked by the entire House for saying that people should be angry.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, you Americans dumped our tea in the river. ‘Now,’ I bellowed, ‘let’s dump your wretched tweets!’ Wordsworth yapped with approval, Mummy simpered with delight and refilled my teacup, reminding me of what a clever, handsome young man I am. Jammy dodgers for me, Mr Vance. And a thousand poxes upon you.