The thin blue line is broken – no-one trusts the police anymore after Henry Nowak.T

Some years ago I was in charge of selecting the “quotes of the year” for this website, for the New Year’s Eve edition. I selected “the Metropolitan Police has apologised…” – thinking myself quite the witty incisive satirist. However, the following year carrying out the same task I realised I could use the same quote. And the year after that. And the year after that. Such was the ongoing institutional dysfunctionality of our biggest police force.

These pro-forma police apologies come with the mandatory “we will learn from the mistakes of….” whatever hideous example of dangerously muddle-headed policing was in question. But they never do, do they? And the Met of course is just the biggest and usually most visible example of the undeniable core-deep cultural problems which extend to forces nationwide.

Indeed, it is impossible not to conclude that our national police force is no longer fit for purpose.

Over my many years as a hack I have lost count of the number of times the cops have promised “root and branch reform”.

And yet the service is markedly, dangerously, worse than it has ever been.

The thin blue line is broken. No-one, but no-one, trusts the police anymore.

And perhaps nor should they when guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council enshrines and dictates two-tier policing, entirely dependent on (perceived) ethnicity.

Their official document states its goal of “producing equality of policing outcomes… does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’…”.

This is not “two-tier policing” as nut-job internet conspiracy, it is two-tier policing as de-facto force policy.

And it is utterly shocking.

When I was a kid the line “if you want to know the time, ask a policeman” was the common refrain. The bobby on the beat was an avuncular community figure – to be respected (and occasionally feared) sure, but he was on your side.

Not anymore.

The police, I’m afraid, have become the enemy of the people.

And I know there are many, many good and brave and decent coppers, but modern policing, just like modern politics, is about optics and messaging, and both are horrible.

I have written for some time that Britain – even outside of mainstream politics – is in the middle of a mental breakdown.

We’re self-harming, we have lost our identity and our purpose and we are taking decisions at all levels which are so obviously against our interests.

We pay people more to stay at home than to work, we demand men be allowed in women-only safe spaces, we buy oil from tyrants instead of using our own, we run down our military to a point we can no-longer defend ourselves, and we teach our kids that Britain is a terrible place with a shameful past.

As if we didn’t choose to save the world in 1939 at a terrible cost to ourselves, as if we weren’t long-standing champions of universal education, universal healthcare and universal democracy, as if we didn’t give the planet penicillin, the steam engine, the telephone, TV, the internet, and as if we didn’t enhance the world with Shakespeare, the Beatles, Hawking, Dickens, and yes, even Adele and Ed Sheeran.

Unfortunately we have fallen victim, nationally, to what the writer Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy” which he describes in his book “Dying to be Kind” as “the inability to implement optimal decisions when one is psychologically conditioned to prioritize empathy or displays of empathy over a rational course of action.”

The whole of this article is of course predicated on the terrible circumstances attached to the murder of poor Henry Nowak.

And surely that description of suicidal empathy is exactly what happened on that fateful night of December 3 last year.

The officers in question had clearly been psychologically conditioned to prioritise empathy, or a display of empathy, over a rational course of action.

The rational course of action being getting help for the boy lying on the ground critically injured and unable to breathe.

Instead they cuffed him and dragged him away as he breathed his last – conditioned to believe the lies of the murderous Sikh Vickrum Digwa who had just stabbed him fatally.

On a human level this defies comprehension but given the proud boast of Olivia Pinkney, Hampshire’s former chief constable, that “being anti-racist, ethical and inclusive is top of our agenda,” it becomes clear.

It’s difficult, because of course we want a police force which is anti-racist and not a return to the hideous pre-Stephen Lawrence days.

But a tip for Ms Pinkney’s successors: it’s not your job to make woke a part of policing. It’s your job not to hire racists in the first place. It’s really not that difficult.

That way you can put shoplifting say, or murderous knife attacks at the top of your agenda.

Ed Davey finally said something of note in Prime Minister’s Questions today stating Henry’s family deserved a politics where we come together to solve problems like knife crime “and not use them as a political football.”

He’s right, but we also need to take a long hard look at ourselves and maybe course-correct our traditional laissez-faire approach to all cultures (which is actually a spin-off of intrinsic British politeness).

Kemi Badenoch’s take that “we need to be a multi-racial society not a multi-cultural one” does chime with a lot of Brits. Tolerant to a fault other nations would not countenance, we have tried to assimilate values and practices which are sometimes completely at odds with the British way of life, and indeed common sense and decency.

So we allow one group to hold contemptible views of women, and turn a blind eye – another group to use female-only spaces despite being male, and turn a blind eye, and another to carry deadly weapons because of their “religious belief”, and turn a blind eye.

We are now realising this tolerance comes with consequences.

I’m nobody’s idea of a wet liberal but even I felt a shiver down the spine as Nigel Farage called for “cold rage” as a response to Henry Nowak’s murder.

But unless we have the political guts and savvy to tackle some of these insidious cultural issues head on, and get tough where necessary, what happened on the streets of Southampton last night will feel like a kids’ party compared to what is to come.