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Leading article

Why won’t Keir Starmer use the word ‘terrorist’?

25 January 2025

9:00 AM

25 January 2025

9:00 AM

Why does Keir Starmer find it so hard to use the word ‘terrorist’ when talking about a man who buys ricin and a machete online, reads up about killing people in an al Qaeda training manual – and then goes out and stabs to death three young girls attending a dance class? When asked this week whether he regarded the crimes committed by Axel Rudakubana as a terrorist act, the Prime Minister couldn’t quite bring himself to do so, instead referring to it as an act of ‘extreme violence clearly intended to terrorise’.

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