Yesterday morning, whilst making their customary cups of tea, Brits checking their phones were confronted by a scene in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that could only be described as medieval. Footage emerged of a Sudanese man shouting incoherently whilst straddling the chest of a second man, whom he was in the process of decapitating. The victim, Stephen Ogilvy, is now blind in the one eye he did not lose in this attack and remains in critical condition in the hospital. I’m almost relieved that such a sight is still shocking to both me and the public; there have been an increasing number of random acts of extreme violence across the United Kingdom in recent years, many linked to migrants or, more scarily, their children. The reason that this video, beyond its shocking barbarity, has elicited such a strong reaction is that it comes on the heels of another brutal murder. Days ago, footage was released of 18-year-old Henry Nowak being stabbed in cold blood by Vickrum Digwa. We are sadly getting used to suffering Islamist violence in Britain, but this was an attack by a Sikh born in Britain, using ceremonial knives that have legal exemptions in legislation to ban the possession of many offensive weapons. Sikhs have generally been regarded as some of the best-integrated groups, but Digwa’s mother hid the knives and lied to the police. After murdering Nowak, Digwa complained to police arriving on the scene that he was the victim — of racism. When Nowak told police he had been stabbed, the cold, dead voice of the modern bureaucratic state drawled from the copper’s mouth: “I don’t think you have mate.” Henry Nowak was then handcuffed. He then bled to death at the scene. The bodycam image of his ghostly white hand, drained of blood, as it was handcuffed by plastic-gloved police, haunts me still. This attack has led to interventions by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Elon Musk. Contrasts have been drawn, in both England and America, between this murder and the behavior of the police with the death of George Floyd. The latter was a truly global event; in Britain, hordes of progressives protested outside No. 10 Downing Street. Like their U.S. counterparts, they screamed “Hands up, don’t shoot!” at largely unarmed police. At least one policeman was induced by the braying mob to “take the knee” right outside the gates to the prime minister’s home. Nowak’s chilling murder saw no such public outcry, until, perhaps, last night, when the broader, broiling social tensions across the U.K. erupted in the streets of Belfast following the latest violent attack. HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupation – residential properties where growing numbers of asylum seekers are housed among residents) were set alight by balaclava-wearing gangs, as were cars and buses. Unforgivable as any kind of street violence is, it is the biggest outbreak yet of a sense of frustration amongst the native population of Britain at what has come to be called “two-tier justice” or “two-tier policing.” This is the growing sense that asylum seekers, immigrants (including/especially illegal ones), and even sometimes ethnic minority Brits are treated more favorably by the modern state than anyone else. This is demonstrably true in at least some areas of modern life. The Sentencing Council, a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization that meddles in the length of criminal sentences, pushes judges to literally give more lenient sentences to non-white people. Coupled with this is the ongoing scandal known as the “small boats” crisis, which highlights a total failure of state capacity. Criminal gangs are brazenly smuggling illegal immigrants across the English Channel from French beaches in dinghies in broad daylight. Achieving what Napoleon, Hitler, and the Spanish Armada failed to do: over 200,000 mostly African and Middle Eastern young men have landed in Britain since 2018, according to the BBC. For context, this number is two and a half times larger than the entire regular British army. These men are rarely deported because of the European Convention on Human Rights, an international legal agreement (separate from the EU) that is overly protective of their rights. Rapists, murderers, and pedophiles have likewise avoided deportation under this foreign law. Last year, a small boat arrival prompted riots after a man sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. The previous summer, the son of Rwandan refugees murdered three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class and was found with ISIS material at home. Mass riots were only prevented by the authorities in 2024 by imprisoning even those who tweeted about the incident the wrong way. Counter-protests by a Muslim militia in Birmingham were not just excused by this same condemnation; they were justified by a Labour Party minister as “Just being scared of the far-right backlash.” Four million new people entered Britain since 2020 in the so-called “Boriswave” despite Brexit being largely about limiting migration and its hero, Boris Johnson, promising to cut it. Along with economic decline and general woe, this old country feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. It’s no wonder that Nigel Farage, leader of the outsider party Reform UK, now tops the polls. But even a revolutionary new force may not be enough to prevent Britain from sliding into civic, religious, or even ethnic strife. I pray that I am wrong. *** James Price is a former Chief of Staff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute.