Trump’s hypocritical attack on the UK shows just how low he will go

There is a longstanding convention that allied nations don’t get involved in each other’s internal politics – the logic is supposed to be that because countries should cooperate on serious global issues like defence, they need to be able to work together whoever is in power.

Apparent breaches of that rule provoke a response: when Barack Obama intervened during the 2016 referendum to say that Brexit would be bad for the UK’s standing in the world, howls of outrage ensued from Britain’s right. Similarly, when activists from Labour went to the US in 2024 to campaign for the Democrats, Republicans acted as if this was appalling, despite it not being official government action.

Donald Trump’s administration, then, should have nothing to say about UK policing in the wake of the Henry Nowak murder: it is entirely a domestic matter, in a country thousands of miles away, and with no US interests at stake whatsoever.

Naturally, Trump’s Department of State has intervened, and it has done so in such a way as to fan the flames of unrest, directly against the wishes of Nowak’s father, who pleaded for his son’s death not to be politicised.

“Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline,” the State Department posted on X on Thursday. “They must be rejected across the West.”

The statement shows a characteristic lack of regard for the actual facts of the case. No one disputes that the initial police response to Nowak fell drastically short of what anyone would expect – officers failed to notice Nowak had been stabbed, ignored his pleas for help and handcuffed him as he lay dying. But that response is being formally investigated, and the inquiry is a long way off reporting its conclusions.

Perhaps racial politics played into the error, perhaps it didn’t – it was a dark night, Nowak was wearing dark clothes and his most serious wound was bleeding internally. The 999 call had come from the brother of Vickrum Digwa, Nowak’s killer, and the two men were framing the event for the officers. It was a confusing scene and the officers got it wrong in the moment.

Even so, the US government using one confused moment – especially one already under official investigation – to publicly berate an ally would be bad enough, but the rest of the facts don’t follow the narrative of “two-tier policing” either. Digwa has already been convicted of murder and sentenced to at least 21 years in prison.

The prosecution was completed in less than six months. Police obtained all the necessary evidence and presented it to court – even the material that was damning with regards to their own errors. Few homicide victims in the US get justice in anything like that time.

For the US under a Trump presidency to even dare to lecture the UK over two-tier justice is, of course, ridiculous. Trump has been busy weaponising US law enforcement against his political adversaries as well as Democrat-led cities. Trump’s decision to send immigration agents into Minneapolis led to the death of two protestors at the hands of federal officers.

Trump has also tried repeatedly to prosecute James Comey, the former head of the FBI. He has pardoned violent insurrectionists who raided the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021, then tried to set up a $1.8 billion “slush fund” to compensate those who claim they had been unfairly punished.

Based on these actions, it is hard to see how Trump would object to a “two-tier” justice system. Instead, it seems he is actively trying to construct one of his own.

Even leaving out Trump’s political prosecutions and draconian use of immigration agents against Democratic-leaning cities, the US has nothing to teach the UK on policing. Deaths at the hands of police in the UK are extremely rare. In the US, around one person in 315,000 is shot dead by police each year. In the UK, the comparable figure is one in 25 million.

The US State Department’s intervention on Henry Nowak is fact-free, short-sighted, diplomatically idiotic and potentially inflammatory – and therefore entirely in character for Trump’s second term.

It is bad enough for right-wing influencers and pundits to treat the tragic death of a teenager as nothing more than fodder for the culture wars, especially when they do so against the express wishes of his family. But for Trump to put the seal of the US federal government behind it is appalling, and deeply abasing to everyone involved.

At every level, Trump’s State Department has acted with cynicism, trusting that even though the hypocrisy of its intervention is plain to see, its supporters won’t notice and won’t care when their opponents point it out.

What is most grimly depressing of all is that, at least on that matter, they are probably correct.