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Downing Street has hit back at the White House and asked the Trump administration not to interfere in British democracy after comments from the US Vice President over the death of student Henry Nowak. On Friday evening, Donald Trump's deputy claimed that Nowak would still be alive if Europe had tightened its grip on the "mass invasion of migrants". The US Vice-President described the 18-year-old's death as "tragic as it is enraging" in the latest intervention by the Trump administration over the case. In response, a Number 10 spokesperson told LBC: “In recent days, we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #lbc #alimiraj #henrynowak #jdvance #migration #immigration #crime #police #ukpolitics #uspolitics #politics LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
Very good afternoon to you, Ali Miraj on LBC
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I will be with you until 3pm for the regular weekend shows. I'm here every Saturday and Sunday from midday until 3pm
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I hope I find you very well this Saturday afternoon. What a week it has been in, I was going to say British politics
0:17
but really it's much broader than that for British society and for all of us
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with this Henry Novak absolute tragedy that we are trying to process mentally
0:29
mentally and come to terms with and what it means for our society at large. J.D. Vance has blamed
0:37
the mass invasion of migrants for Henry Novak's death. This is on the front page of the Times
0:42
The vice president of the U.S. has blamed Henry Novak's death on the mass invasion of migrants
0:48
and said it must be met with righteous anger in an explosive intervention on social media
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He said that Novak died in the same way a civilization dies, abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him and accused of hate crimes he did not commit
1:09
He drew a furious response from Sir Keir Starmer, who accused the vice president of using Novak's murder to, and I quote, create further division
1:18
His strongest criticism yet of the Trump administration in a post on X, J.D. Vance, the U.S. vice president, said this, and I quote
1:29
Novak's death was enraging, adding, and I quote, he should still be alive today. And he would be
1:37
if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of
1:44
self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who
1:50
love it. In comments that risk reigniting tensions on the streets of Southampton, he added this
1:59
Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life
2:04
and I fear he won't be the last. Each time a life like this is lost, a proper response
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the only response, is righteous anger. Now, I think J.D. Vance's comments need some dissection
2:20
and I will dissect them properly, because when J.D. Vance talks about this whole notion of elites
2:30
that have effectively not stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred
2:35
and the mass invasion of migrants, I think his comments need to be thought about and addressed properly
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in the sense that he is concerned about civilizational erasure of, let's just put it bluntly white christian civilization in europe right that is what it
2:56
is about and let's not forget that there's a presidential election that he's also potentially
3:00
wanting to fight in 2028 and his main argument the only argument where the trump administration
3:07
has had any success whatsoever is on immigration with their ice crackdown and the mexican border i mean he not exactly going to point to foreign policy successes is he Let be honest So that not going to work So if he wants to beat Gavin Newsom in a presidential runoff
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he's trying to pave that way. So this is really more for a domestic audience than about us
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But he does make this point, and he's made it consistently before, and I think it's a point that merits discussion more broadly
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but it is totally irrelevant to the case at hand. This guy who killed and murdered Henry Novak
3:46
was a psycho nutter with a knife who happened to be Sikh
3:53
one of the most integrated, successfully integrated and model communities in this country
4:00
It was not that he had been radicalised online, as far as I'm aware, by some sort of mantra that was being espoused of some ideological conflict
4:10
between whatever he believed in in the West. Not at all. I haven't heard about that. Have you
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So what on earth is J.D. Vance talking about? Yes, there's a broader discussion to be had
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about people who do come into this country, who are not going to be aligned with the cultural
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values of this country and who come from very, very different backgrounds with very different
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mindsets, in many cases that might not like the West at all. That's a valid conversation to have
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But it's not the conversation to have here, is it? Not at all. J.D., you know, I would say this
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J.D., I love you. I love you, J.D., and I love the U.S. So I'm going to say this straight from
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heart, man to man, JD. Instead of telling us about how our society is going down the toilet
5:01
I have a little advice for you. Start by fixing New York. It's a dump. The amount of people that
5:08
live in the entrance to banks in New York who are homeless is a disgrace. So are the rats running
5:15
down Sixth Avenue. So is the public transportation, which is reminiscent of a third world country
5:20
I hear it on good authority, J.D., that just a few blocks away from the White House, you step into the wrong area and you will be taking your life into your own hands
5:29
J.D., I also hear that that once great city of San Francisco, you know, the one down the road from Palo Alto where we have tech billionaires
5:36
Yes, in San Francisco, J.D., in that once great city, we have people living in cardboard boxes, hooked on opioids and vomiting into gutters
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and we also have ice cracking down on innocent civilians in the U.S
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And apologies, J.D., coming from people who say every time a nutter goes around a school in the U.S
6:01
killing a bunch of kids, that this is a tragedy. But you love your guns in your country more, J.D., don't you
6:08
Than you love protecting the lives of innocent children. J.D., before lecturing us, go and sort out your own mess
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That's my message to you and I do it because I love you JD and I love your country
6:20
I want to ask you this question, is the mass invasion of migrants to blame for Henry Novak's
6:24
death JD Vance thinks it is what do you think 0345 6060 973 text 84850 Let me tell you this though Where J Vance could have had a point had he put it better is that mass migration has led over the years
6:43
to increasing conversations about race and how we deal with race. And I think about it in these terms. Go back to 1999. McPherson report after the death of Stephen Lawrence in absolutely terrible circumstances in 1993 talked about institutional racism
7:06
You think about the Parekh report in 2000 that talked about multiculturalism
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You think about the Ted Cantle report in 2001 that was on the back of riots in northern cities and tensions between communities that talked about trying to foster a sense of community cohesion
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Macpherson was a moment in time, an inflection point that made us think
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I wonder if Henry Novak's death is going to be a similar inflection point now
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because I think this. I think that with all good intentions, we have moved too far along this road of
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everything is about race, institutional racism, critical race theory that is an Americanism
8:03
that has infected our own politics. The whole Black Lives Matter movement
8:10
on the back of the death of George Floyd in 2020, appalling. It was absolutely appalling. People were taking the knee all over the place. Footballers, politicians, Keir Starmer. When people ask, why is no one taking the knee for Henry Novak? I think it daps into a much, much deeper sense of what is going on here
8:30
And I fear that if this is just pushed away as just another issue, as just another case of one errant police officer that has acted abominably in this particular case, and we'll see what the IOPC investigation shows, but frankly, the IOPC, judging by their track record, could take years to come back on this, and we don't have years
8:55
in years, heaven knows where we'll be at the moment, Tommy Robinson can click his fingers
9:01
and he has thousands and thousands of people marching down Whitehall. Give it years, restore Britain
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It's come from nowhere and is now outflanking Nigel Farage and Reform UK on the right
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There is a competition on the right now for who can be the most extreme
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We don't have two years for an IOPC report to come out. We don't have months for an IOPC report to come out
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We need action now. And what I fear is, what I genuinely fear is this
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You think about inflection points in British society, the death of Stephen Lawrence was
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one, and it's right and important that we remember the death of Stephen Lawrence, appalling
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as it was and what it meant for us But I also think it important that we now also think about the inflection point we are at now and whether this whole move towards critical race theory
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this whole move towards everything being seen as a fight against people who are white and
10:01
institutional bias and racism on the part of white people has simply gone too far
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I believe it has. And I believe that unless we address this and move it the other way
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we're going to have some serious problems in society. There are multiple articles
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around how we got here. Indeed, there's one by Tony Sewell in the Telegraph today
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who actually wrote the Race and Disparities report. And he says that the response of officers at the scene of Henry Novak's murder
10:38
was clearly informed by a pernicious kind of race ideology. This led to a situation where the police, whose duty is to serve and protect the public
10:45
were unable to distinguish between the victim and the perpetrator of a heinous crime
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Put simply, if Henry had been black, all hell would have broken loose
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It's true, isn't it? if Henry was black, all hell would have broken loose
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And I understand the request of Henry Novak's family that this should not be politicised
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It should bring people together. My fear is they are not in control of the wider situation here
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This should be an inflection point for us all to reflect on right now
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right now, as to how we got into a situation where the perpetrator of a crime could cry racism
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and know that he would be protected and the questions would not be asked of him
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but asked of the victim. How did we end up here? So J.D. Vance has got it wrong on this
11:42
He may have it right in terms of having a discussion more broadly, but on this particular point, he's way off the mark
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What he should have been talking about is how have we inculcated a mindset in this country where race has taken over so many things
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where we've lost our minds on this stuff, and we've ended up in this position. I fear if we
12:02
don't tackle it now, I see ordinary British folk, white British folk becoming increasingly
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radicalised. And before I let you go, before I go to the break, I'm going to say this
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if anyone mentions the p word if anyone mentions the n word we rightly find it offensive
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why is it acceptable that people can say gammon why why why is it acceptable it's a disgrace
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we have moved too far with good intentions in the wrong direction and it's coming back
12:40
to bite us vehemently in the backside. Is the mass invasion of migrants to blame for Henry Novak's death
12:50
Not exactly, but the race relations industry that sprung up on the back of it
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well-intentioned but ill-thought-through, is a massive part of the problem
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