The bravery is unambiguous. As panic erupted on the 6.25pm LNER service, a man did not flee. He advanced. Samir Zitouni, a 48-year-old father, a “valued member” of staff for two decades, saw a threat and moved to meet it. The British Transport Police, not an institution known for hyperbole, have called his actions “nothing short of heroic.” He is, by any sane measure, a national hero.
But for the ideologues of Reform UK, Samir Zitouni presents a catastrophic data error. He is the wrong kind of immigrant.
You see, the narrative was set. The script was written. Immigrants, particularly those from Muslim-majority nations like Algeria, are meant to be a statistic in a press release about pressure on public services or a mugshot in a crime report. They are not meant to be the protagonist in a story of quintessential British gallantry. They are certainly not supposed to have their heroism confirmed by a Deputy Chief Constable named Stuart.
The problem for Reform UK isn’t just that Zitouni is brave. It’s that his bravery is Algerian.
This is a country with a long, proud history of resistance and valour. It’s in the DNA. So when Samir Zitouni saw a knife, he didn’t see an abstract political talking point; he saw a threat to innocent people that needed to be stopped. This is a practical, tangible form of courage that exists outside the spreadsheet-based xenophobia of modern political discourse. And it is this inconvenient truth that has sent Reform UK’s comms team into a tailspin worthy of a Whitehall farce.
Their desperation is palpable. One can imagine the frantic focus groups:
Moderator: “So, having seen the footage of the Algerian-born employee saving British lives, how do you feel about immigration?”
Reform Voter: “Well, it’s confusing, Brenda. He’s a hero, obviously. But the leaflet said they were all a problem. Is there a leaflet update?”
The party’s attempts to recalibrate have been tragically transparent. Leaked internal memos suggest a move to what insiders call “The Yes, But” strategy.
“Yes, he was brave,” a proposed talking point reads, “but has his integration been so complete that he has unthinkingly adopted the British value of queueing, potentially putting himself at the front of the danger line and thus creating a bottleneck of heroism that a native might have navigated more efficiently?”
Another angle being explored is to question the very nature of his sacrifice. “By taking such a severe injury, is he not placing an undue, long-term burden on the NHS – the very institution we claim is overstretched by people like him? A truly considerate immigrant would have sustained only minor, easily treatable injuries.”
But these contortions fail. They fail because the story is too powerful. They fail because Samir Zitouni, in that one decisive moment, did more for his fellow citizens than any political party has done in years. He didn’t argue about British values; he enacted them. He embodied a truth that simplistic nationalism cannot process: that courage, decency, and sacrifice are not qualities issued with a passport at Dover. They are human qualities, and they can arrive on these shores from anywhere—even, to Reform UK’s utter horror, from Algeria.
