The best friend of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence says he is now a Tory after seeing three Conservative-led governments dismantle a “police authoritarian state” created by Labour that “criminalised black people hand over fist”.

Duwayne Brooks, who was with Lawrence when they were attacked by a racist gang at a bus stop in southeast London in 1993, also said it was “outrageous” that he had still not been provided with answers about police misconduct in the case, despite promises to do so by successive Metropolitan police commissioners.

Twenty years ago next week a landmark report by Sir William Macpherson concluded that the botched inquiry into the killing of the A-level pupil and aspiring architect meant the Met was “institutionally racist”.

The inquiry was commissioned