The prime minister showed steely authority as he pushed back on ‘cover-up’ claims over the Southport killings
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Editorial: Nigel Farage and his colleagues are not interested in reasonable debate – the prime minister was entirely correct in quashing any early signs of conspiracy theories before they take root. Sir Keir Starmer was right to get out ahead of those who see conspiracies and cover-ups everywhere – to try to set out in calm and reasonable language how determined he is to try to stop future attacks like the Southport murders.
There are obviously limits to what he and the authorities can do, but he needs to reassure the public. Hence, his morning statement from Downing Street the day after the guilty plea from the murderer brought the court case to an unexpected and sudden end.
He set out some of the early lessons of the failure of the police, social services and schools, who were aware of Axel Rudakubana as a potential problem. The teenager did not fit into the conventional view of terrorism, Sir Keir said, because his motivation appeared to be more an obsession with violence than an ideology.
He said that Rudakubana’s case was more like mass shootings in schools in America than “the sort of behaviour we’ve associated with terrorism” such as al-Qaeda, “which tended to be more organised, in groups with a clear political ideology or motive”.
This seems to be part of the explanation for why it was so difficult to predict that Rudakubana would kill, and Sir Keir was right to be open about his thoughts on the case. He is well aware that there are people such as Nigel Farage who are reckless about stoking the public’s fears in order to make political arguments.
