Sir Keir Starmer says Southport murders are 'a line in the sand for Britain' and promises inquiry will bring 'change'
Giving a speech in Downing Street, the day after Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July, the Prime Minister described it as “a devastating moment in our history”.
Despite contact with state agencies such as Prevent from the age of 13, aimed at countering terrorism, authorities failed to stop the attack which claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
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Hide AdHome Secretary Yvette Cooper announced an inquiry into the case yesterday evening, saying the country needed “independent answers” on Prevent and other agencies’ contact with the “extremely violent” Rudakubana and “how he came to be so dangerous”.
Addressing the nation, Sir Keir said: “I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure, failure which in this case frankly leaps off the page.”
He said: “We must make sure that 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.”
The Prime Minister addressed the suggestions from opposition parties and on social media that information had been covered up.
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Hide Ad“Throughout this case, to this point, we have only been focused on justice,” the former director of public prosecutions said.
“If this trial had collapsed because I, or anyone else, had revealed crucial details, while the police were investigating, while the prosecutors were investigating, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man, the prospect of justice destroyed for the victims.
“I would never do that, and nobody would ever forgive me if I had. That’s why the law of the country forbade me, or anyone else, from disclosing details sooner.”


However, now, Sir Keir said, “it is time for those questions, and the first of those is whether this was a terrorist attack”.
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Hide AdWhen police searched the home of Rudakubana in Banks, Lancashire, after he carried out the attack on July 29 last year, they found knives and poison, as well as images and documents relating to violence, war and genocide on his devices.
Sources said the material showed an “obsession with extreme violence” but there was no evidence he subscribed to any political or religious ideology or was “fighting for a cause”.
Minutes before he left home to travel to the dance class, it is understood the 18-year-old searched social media site X for the Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbing, which led to a video of the stabbing of the Bishop Emmanuel and five others during a sermon at church in Sydney in April 2024.
Among the items found on two tablet computers belonging to Rudakubana were documents including A Concise History Of Nazi Germany and The Myth Of The Remote Controlled Car Bomb.
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Hide AdAlso found was a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual.
Yet it took weeks for police to charge him with terrorist offences.
Addressing this and the changing nature of terrorism, Sir Keir said: “The predominant threat was highly organised groups with clear political intent – groups like al Qaida.
“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, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.”
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Hide AdHe continued: “My concern in this case is we have clearly got an example of extreme violence, individualised violence, that we have to protect our children from and our citizens from.
“It is a new threat, it’s not what we would have usually thought of as terrorism when definitions were drawn up, when guidelines were put in place, when the framework was put in place and we have to recognise that here today.”
He said the law and framework for responding needed to be appropriate to the “new threat” and whatever changes were necessary in the law would be made.
The Prime Minister also referenced the violent content that Rudakubana viewed online moments before carrying out the attack.
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Hide AdHe said the inquiry would include “questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online, because you can’t tell me the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms”.
Sir Keir said: “There are also questions about accountability of the Whitehall and Westminster system.
“A system that is far too often driven by circling the institutional wagon. That does not react until justice is hard-won by campaigners, or tragedies like this finally spur a degree of action.”
The Prime Minister referenced his experience as director of public prosecutions when the grooming scandal first broke.
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Hide Ad“I want to be crystal clear in front of the British people today, we will leave no stone unturned,” he said.
“I was the prosecutor who first spotted failures in grooming cases in my institution, the CPS, 14 years ago.
“I was the prosecutor who first did something about it, by bringing the rape gangs in Rochdale to justice.
“My approach as Prime Minister will be no different. If any shortcomings are now holding back the ability of this country to keep its citizens and its children safe, I will find them and I will root them out.”
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Hide AdSir Keir concluded his speech by referencing the wave of violent riots which rippled across the country, including in Rotherham and Hull, after the attack.
He praised Southport for coming together in the face of the tragedy.
The Prime Minister said: “Even as that community faced an unimaginable evil, even as they had to endure mindless violence, bricks and bottles thrown at their community, their businesses, their mosque, police officers attacked, including those who were on the scene of this vile murder, even despite all of that, they chose to come together.”