There is the reality and then there is the grift. So let’s start with the reality. There are problems with some of the people the British asylum system allows in; there are issues with the police. Some well-meaning efforts to crack down on discrimination have had unwanted effects.

There have been shocking failures to protect public safety, and cope with serious mental illness. From the triple murderers, Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, and Valdo Calocane, to the Pakistani-dominated rape gangs, warnings went unheeded through incompetence or a fear of appearing racist. 

Nor can we ignore the brutality. The sight this week of a Sudanese migrant sitting astride his victim, slashing at his throat on a Belfast street brought back memories of the murder of the soldier, Lee Rigby, 13 years earlier. The killing of Rhiannon Whyte was a murder of astonishing savagery. These incidents may be small in number but they understandably alarm. And since all these men were asylum seekers, migrants or the children of immigrants, many jump to sweeping conclusions. 

It would be abnormal not to be outraged by such crimes, or heartbroken by the last moments of Henry Nowak, who died in handcuffs because police, who had been called out by his Sikh killer to what he said was a racist assault, did not initially believe he had been stabbed. 

It would also be right to be outraged at the case of Chas Corrigan, a British construction worker who murdered a Saudi student in Cambridge, stabbing him in the neck. But you probably haven’t heard about it since it doesn’t fit the zeitgeist. You may also have missed Alina Burns, a neo-Nazi teenager who set on a Kurdish barber with an axe.

I do not mention these last cases to indulge in reflex whataboutery. They do not invalidate the desire to avoid importing more killers. But we hear little of these other incidents because their white perpetrators do not fit the narrative — or the political business model — of the populist right. No Reform UK figure tweeted: “some cultures are better than others” when John Ashby was jailed for beating and raping a Sikh woman in her home in Walsall.

In the pendulum of political fashion Britain is now being offered its “white lives matter” moment, complete with the hyper-radicalised selective vision of the Black analogue. Diversity policies are lambasted as an anti-white plot. White victimhood is the template for the populist right across the west from Elon Musk to the far-right extremists he promotes on X. 

We saw it in JD Vance’s assertion that the Nowak case was proof of “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the west”, a preposterous claim to anyone who knows Britain’s Sikh community. But Vance is not only speaking to the UK. Britain and Europe are the cautionary liberal tale he is selling Americans.

Then we have the media and bloggers seizing on incidents that fit the white victimhood agenda, ignoring those that do not. This is a smart career move. Each crime is a chance to attract subscribers, get on TV, reach a US audience and promote books with titles like Suicide of a Nation or The Silent Jihad. “Is Britain racist against white men?” asks the Telegraph.

The same is true for politicians on the right. Outrage is their currency. Hence the ratchet of rhetoric from Britain’s populist leaders, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and Tommy Robinson, and their disingenuous warnings of civil unrest. Robinson’s response to the Belfast attack was to call for rallies (promoted of course on X), knowing some were likely to end in violence. The sight of people being burnt out of their homes is then used by the grifters to warn of spreading unrest.

Some argue that in his call for “pure cold rage” over the Nowak case, Farage made a mistake. Perhaps, but it was not an accident. This was a political calculation. His audience is those who feel ignored, let down by politicians in London. (Note the number of asylum hotels in poorer areas). Nowak can be fitted into his story of liberal elites imposing two-tier law on the white population. Rage is the model, one rewarded by social media. 

It may also be that Reform has noticed the sharp fall in net migration and even, for now, small boat crossings. The immigration agenda is now mainstream so the party needs a larger dragon to slay. And there is a fear of being outbid by a more hardline party. The impact goes in only one direction: an ever more hostile environment for non-whites.

Politicians have always seized on crimes. In the 1990s Tony Blair made his reputation with his response to the Jamie Bulger murder (he later lamented his “good politics but bad policy”). But it is the job of political leaders to cool tempers and find ways to take the grievances away from the grifters.

If the opportunists are to be defeated, mainstream leaders have to grasp the kernel of reality in their arguments. They must take public safety seriously, tackle the failings in policing and mental health services and weed out the dangerous from the asylum system. They may also, as the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch argues, address any proven (as opposed to merely asserted) perverse impacts of anti-discrimination policies. 

The grifters offer two threats. The first, obviously, is voters falling for their dishonest narrative. The second is voters’ fears being disregarded out of contempt for those who raise the issues, an approach that will not address those concerns. Not that the grifters would mind. The core of their business model is the grievance, not the solution.