After coming under criticism for not announcing a national inquiry over the grooming gangs scandal, Keir Starmer moved quickly on Monday to announce a public inquiry into the Southport murders. After Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year, the Prime Minister this morning held a press conference promising that ‘no stone’ will be ‘left unturned’ when it comes to asking the ‘difficult questions… unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities’:

We must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile perpetrator but instead with a fundamental change in how Britain protects its citizens and its children.

There are plenty of difficult questions to ask after new details emerged regarding Rudakubana’s history. He was found in possession of a terrorist document and of the biological weapon, ricin. He was referred to the counter-extremism Prevent programme three times but on each occasion a ‘judgement was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention’. Rudakubana also had a long history of violence having been expelled from school and visited by the police on several occasions.

The Southport murders led to a series of riots over the summer. At the time, Keir Starmer and the authorities were accused of being part of a ‘cover-up’ over details in Rudakubana’s case. Speaking this week, Nigel Farage accused the state of a ‘gigantic cover-up from day one’:

The authorities knew very, very quickly about his expulsion from school, the ricin-making and the al-Qaeda material, yet they refused to class the murders as terror-related for fear of the reaction there might have been.

In the press conference, Starmer was asked whether details about Rudakubana’s previous interactions with the state were withheld from the public in a bid to stop the riots from intensifying. The Prime Minister said he knew in the wake of the attack that Rudakubana had previously been referred to the Prevent counter-extremism programme. However, he said that releasing this information could have risked the trial collapsing. He added that ‘responsibility for the disorder and violence lies with those who perpetrated it’.

As for the coming inquiry, Starmer said he would act on its conclusions but would also seek to take some action sooner. He said terrorism had changed and ‘acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms’. Starmer said the Southport murders ‘will be a line in the sand’ as he talked about failures in the Prevent programme and promised a review of its counter-terrorism strategy:

The perpetrator was referred to the Prevent programme on three separate occasions — in 2019 once and in 2021 twice… Yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention, a judgment that was clearly wrong and which failed those families. And I acknowledge that here today.

Now that the guilty verdict is in, Starmer is hoping that by moving quickly he can show the public he has a grip on the horrifying events. However, many questions remain.