In a sharp diplomatic exchange that highlights growing transatlantic friction over migration rhetoric, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy has publicly confirmed he pushed back firmly against U.S. Vice President JD Vance last Saturday, telling Vance his claims tying the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak to mass immigration were factually wrong.
The confrontation unfolded during what Lammy described as a “robust” but still cordial phone call between the two senior politicians. Despite sitting on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, Lammy noted that he and Vance have built a personal friendship rooted in shared religious convictions and similar family backgrounds. “We had an agreeable conversation because we have got a relationship, but I wanted to make clear that I disagree with some of the facts that he was asserting and to present the facts to him,” Lammy explained in an interview with Sky News on Sunday.
Vance’s controversial comments came one day before the call, when the U.S. vice president posted on social platform X claiming there should be “righteous anger” over Nowak’s December 2024 murder in Southampton, and implying the killing was partially a consequence of “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
What Vance’s post failed to acknowledge, however, are core verified facts of the case that undermine the immigration connection: the convicted killer, 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, is a British citizen who is already serving a life sentence for the crime, with a minimum 21-year term handed down by courts this week. Digwa, who is Sikh, used an 21-centimeter Sikh dagger to carry out the attack, and falsely told responding officers that Nowak — who was white — had assaulted him in a racist attack. This false claim led police to initially misidentify Nowak as the aggressor, leaving the wounded teen handcuffed and untreated as he lay dying. The Independent Office for Police Conduct, the UK’s independent police watchdog, has launched an ongoing probe into the officers’ actions on scene to determine if any misconduct occurred.
Notably, even the victim’s own family has rejected efforts to politicize the tragedy. Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, has explicitly stated that the killing is not a matter of racism or religious division. He has said he wants his son’s death to spark action for safer public spaces, rather than being exploited to stoke “further division, hatred or tension.”
Vance’s remarks are not an isolated incident: just days earlier, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth drew widespread criticism for invoking anti-immigration “invasion” rhetoric during a D-Day commemoration speech on French soil, marking another high-profile example of American conservative figures weighing in on European domestic political issues.
Digwa’s conviction has already been seized upon by anti-immigration activists and far-right groups in the UK to advance their policy agendas. Tensions boiled over earlier this week in Southampton, when a far-right-led protest over the killing devolved into violent disorder: demonstrators pelted local police with chairs, aluminum cans, rocks and flares, and six additional people have since been charged by police in connection with the violence.
Downing Street has already formally pushed back against Vance’s intervention. In a statement issued Friday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office criticized outside actors “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”
During his phone call with Vance, Lammy emphasized that the killing had no connection to mass migration whatsoever, and stressed that the killer was already in custody. Lammy added that he reminded Vance of the Nowak family’s explicit wishes, noting that the inflammatory tweet ran counter to the family’s request to avoid turning the tragedy into a tool for division. “It’s not helpful to tweet in this way, partly because of what the Nowak family have asked for, and reminded him about their desire not to make this an issue of division and hatred, but to make this an issue of common sense,” Lammy told Sky News.