Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has said he called US Vice-President JD Vance to tell him he was “wrong” in the comments he made about the murder of teenager Henry Nowak.
Vance blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student, who was fatally stabbed by Vickrum Digwa last year, on the “mass invasion of migrants” and said the “only response” was “righteous anger”.
Lammy told the BBC he had spoken to Vance on Saturday and told the vice-president the killing “has got nothing to do with mass migration”.
Digwa falsely claimed he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence after murdering Nowak in Southampton in December last year.
Digwa, who is British and was born in the UK, was jailed for life for murdering Nowak with a blade he claimed he was carrying for religious reasons linked to his Sikh faith.
Bodycam footage showed police handcuffing Nowak as he lay dying after Digwa falsely claimed to officers he was the victim of a racist attack.
The killing ignited a fierce debate about policing and knife laws in the UK, with violent protests erupting in Southampton.
Posting to X on Friday, Vance said Nowak had died “the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him”.
The killing had been as “tragic as it is enraging” and Nowak, Vance said, would still be alive today “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”.
In an interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Lammy said he had called Vance to discuss his comments.
“I told him he was wrong,” Lammy said.
He said the pair had an “agreeable” conversation, adding he did not agree with Vance’s “caricature” of Western civilisation and its perceived decline.
Lammy said he reminded Vance that Nowak’s family had “called for calm” in what he described as “a robust conversation” with the vice-president.
“We remain colleagues and friends, we’re able to do that, and he has strongly held views,” Lammy said.
Henry Nowak’s father, Mark, had appealed for calm in a statement outside the court following the sentencing, saying: “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”
Lammy and Vance have formed an unlikely friendship over the years and have met regularly since entering public office in their respective countries.
The friendship between the deputy prime minister and the vice-president began when Lammy was an opposition MP and Vance had just been elected to the US Senate.
Last summer, the vice-president and his family stayed with Lammy at his grace-and-favour home, Chevening, in Kent, during a holiday visit to the UK.
But the US-UK relationship has been rockier of late, particularly over the war in Iran after the British government decided to not join the Trump administration’s offensive military action in the Gulf.
