Henry Nowak would “still be alive today” if Britain and Europe had “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”, said J.D. Vance on X. The “proper response – the only response – is righteous anger”.
The “most outspoken member” of an “evangelistic” administration, Vance’s ire does seem to have a “particular focus on the UK”, said The Times. He has commented on protests around abortion clinics, and told Keir Starmer that there have been “infringements on free speech” in Britain.
Vance is now using the Nowak murder to “bolster” his narrative of Britain as a “once powerful nation” “pandering to liberalism”. This could just be a reminder for American voters that the Republican Party retains an “uncompromising approach to wokeism, borders and policing” in the upcoming mid-terms. But if Vance is anointed successor to the Maga movement, comments such as these could be a sign of things to come.
What did the commentators say?
“J.D. Vance is wrong to intervene in the controversy around the murder of Henry Nowak,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. That said, “there is a good deal of hypocrisy on show”: Labour Remainers had no issue with Barack Obama “intervening” in the Brexit debate, and have had “no compunction about condemning Donald Trump over domestic US policy. “Inevitably, politicians welcome foreign interference only if it suits their arguments”, when “it would be far better if each stayed out of the other’s business”.
Vance was “surely right” to call out the “politics of self-hatred” in the British justice system, said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. It is “perfectly legitimate” for the US to comment publicly on what is happening in the UK. The government’s reaction, arguing he has “crossed a red line of diplomatic protocol”, has been hypocritical and “frankly pathetic”.
Britain is just as guilty. For instance, the Labour Party sent 100 activists to campaign for Kamala Harris in 2024. “Rather than engage in shameless pearl-clutching, Starmer’s government should listen to what our closest ally is telling us.”
Interventions like Vance’s are “deepening the split between the Trump administration and Britain’s Labour government”, said Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal. The division is inherent. Where Vance sees a mission to “stabilise values and societies after decades of self-inflicted confusion”, Britain sees “Bible-bashing and race-baiting”, and hears “only atavistic calls to the wrong kind of identity politics”.
This “political opportunism” against Britain goes far deeper than the vice president, said James Schneider in The New Statesman. “The exploitation of Nowak’s death is of a piece with a clear US state strategy, one which turns Europe into a source for American rhetoric.” Vance talks about Britain “not as an equal, but as a provincial outpost of the imperial system, nominally independent and permanently available for correction”.
What next?
Vance’s stance could have implications for the next election on this side of the Atlantic, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. If Vance remains in the White House as vice president, “or even as Trump’s successor” after the US elections in 2028, it’s hard to imagine him “standing idly by” when the UK goes to the polls, likely in 2029.
At best, the reaction to the Nowak intervention shows us that “plenty of Britons still reflexively dislike being lectured by Americans”. Yet, it has also warned us “not to take our political sovereignty for granted. Sooner or later, we may need to defend it.”