Prime Minister Takes On Claims Of 'Cover Up' Over Southport Attack
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer delivers a statement at 10 Downing Street in London
3 min read
Keir Starmer has taken on claims of a “cover up” in the case of the Southport attack last July.
The prime minister also warned that “Britain now faces a new threat” and that “terrorism has changed” after he announced an inquiry into the UK’s counter-extremism system.
Starmer was speaking from Downing Street on Tuesday morning after 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana pled guilty to the murder of three girls in Southport in July last year.
Following the attack, misinformation on social media claimed that the suspect was an illegal migrant, leading to unrest.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has accused the government of a "cover-up" and claimed a “vacuum of information” led to the violence and riots that followed the murders in the summer.
Speaking from Downing Street, Starmer said: “I know people will be watching right now, and they'll be saying we've heard all this before, the promises, the sorrow, the inquiry that comes and goes, an inability to change that, frankly, has become the oxygen of wider conspiracy, and we've seen that throughout this case, a suggestion that there has been a cover-up.
"I want to put on record that yesterday's guilty verdict only happened because hundreds, if not thousands of dedicated public servants worked towards it, many of whom endured absolutely harrowing circumstances, particularly in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.”
However, Starmer admitted he was “under no illusions that until the wider state shows the country it can change not just what it delivers for people but also its culture, then this atmosphere of mistrust will remain”.
He pledged that “we will leave no stone unturned”.
Following the entering of a guilty plea, the home secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday revealed that Rudakubana was referred to Prevent - the government anti-extremism scheme - three times before the attack.
On Tuesday, Starmer said that on each occasion “a judgement was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention, a judgement that was clearly wrong”.
“If this trial had collapsed because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.”
“That is why the law of this country forbade me or anyone else from disclosing details sooner. Nonetheless, it is now time for those questions.”
The first question, Starmer said, is whether the event was a terrorist attack.
“Britain now faces a new threat. Terroism has changed. In the past the predominant threat was highly organized groups with clear political intent, groups like Al Qaeda. That threat, of course, remains. But now, alongside that. We also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online. Desperate for notoriety.”
While Starmer said these individuals may be “harder to spot”, “we can’t shrug our shoulders and accept that”.
Starmer said he had already tasked the new independent prevent Commissioner David Anderson KC with reviewing the counter-extremist system “to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”.
Starmer said: “If the law needs to change to recognize this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it and quickly.”
And he said “there are also bigger questions, questions such as, how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence, freely available online”.
“Southport must be a line in the sand, but nothing will be off the table in this inquiry, nothing.”
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