Amazon was not responsible for Southport

It is an insult for our tone-deaf politicians to suggest otherwise

At a hastily convened press conference this week, Keir Starmer announced a public inquiry into the Southport murders. Axel Rudakubana’s unexpected guilty plea removed any barriers stopping the Prime Minster revealing what he was told in the hours and days following the horrifying knife attack that left three young girls dead - including Rudakubana’s possession of a terrorist training manual and the deadly toxin ricin.

The PM also knew that Rudakubana had been referred to the anti-terrorism programme PREVENT three times before his arrest last summer, as well as details of the 17-year-old’s troubled and violent past, including his expulsion from school and having been caught with a knife on ten separate occasions by police.

The question is, why didn’t he say anything? Why did Sir Keir allow the festering information vacuum which fuelled conspiracy theories and worsened last summer’s civil unrest? In his defence, the PM argues that he did not want to make the information public at the time because it would have risked prejudicing Rudakubana’s trial, denying justice to the families of the three children he brutally murdered.

On that point, he is right. Without a fair trial, there can be no conviction. The integrity of our judicial system must be upheld at all times—if only to give grieving families the justice they deserve.

But if that is indeed the case, and the Government was so concerned with not prejudicing ongoing cases, why did they take the opposite approach with the hundreds of people who were arrested in the wake of the Southport riots? The Prime Minister had no problem labelling those arrested in connection with the violence as 'far-right thugs' and 'criminals' before many were even charged, and indeed, before any had been convicted.

Even the Home Office posted on its social media accounts on August 14th, 2024, that those “criminals will face the full force of the law” - after announcing that over 1,000 arrests had been made concerning the recent public disorder. However, being arrested doesn’t make someone a criminal.

In any case, doesn't this rhetoric from the country’s most senior politicians jeopardise those ongoing cases? It seems Two tier Kier has struck again. And it's a reputation he will struggle to shake off.

The Prime Minister’s address to the country also raised more questions than it answered. Namely, why wasn’t more done to protect the public from Axel Rudakubana? So many red flags were raised.

If a person being flagged as a potential terrorist at the tender age of 13 and being caught with a knife by police at least 10 times is not enough to act, then our institutions are fundamentally broken.

While we hope that Starmer’s hastily convened inquiry into the system’s handling of Rudakubana will address these concerns, we must not settle for distractions.

And that is precisely what the Home Secretary is doing - whetting our appetite for pointless distractions and virtue-signalling nonsense.

Calling upon the failure of Amazon to sell the Southport killer a knife misses the point entirely. He could have taken his parents’ cooking knife, and the outcome would have been the same.

Surely, the bigger problem is the fact that he was able to wander our streets brandishing a knife with such impunity. Why was nothing done then? Where were the police and our criminal justice system in protecting us from that walking disaster?

An ID-based two-factor authentication system for internet blade purchases would not have stopped Axel. He could have simply waited until he turned 18 or walked into Tesco to purchase his weapon of choice.

In fact, to dub the ‘quiet, Welsh choirboy’ as he was previously laughably described as the 'Amazon killer’ just shows how tone-deaf and painfully naïve our political establishment is.

If I were to go on a rampage tomorrow, bashing people over the head with a heavy plant pot, would I be labelled the ‘Garden Centre Killer’? Of course not. Because that’s ridiculous.

The real problem here is being overlooked. And our politicians know this. If the solution were as simple as two-factor authentication for knife sales, this would have been done long ago. The brass neck of the likes of Yvette Cooper to point fingers at online retailers while failing to lay the responsibility on our police and lax justice system is simply astonishing.

Our public services have failed Britain on every level imaginable. We need muscular public services from police to probation to social services to protect us. No mucking about with sensitivities.

Axel Rudakubana should have been institutionalised and kept away from society much sooner. It is a disgrace that he slipped through the net so many times. And the only people to blame are those charged with protecting this country.