Starmer’s mealy-mouthed statement shows he’s no leader

Sir Keir Starmer has announced an inquiry into how the British state 'failed' to identify the risk posed by Axel Rudakubana
Sir Keir Starmer has announced an inquiry into how the British state ‘failed’ to identify the risk posed by Axel Rudakubana - Shutterstock

In the six months since he became Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer has proved again and again that he simply doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader. On Tuesday morning, as damning revelations came to light about multiple official interactions with Axel Rudakubana before the Southport massacre, the PM gave an address from Number 10 in defence of something that really, really matters to him. His job.

If Sir Keir intended to come across as a unifying Father of the Nation, he failed miserably. The effect was more weaselly solicitor arguing that he couldn’t possibly have been expected to disclose details of the terrorist’s background because the trial could have collapsed (“I would never do that and nobody would forgive me if I had”). The PM didn’t make sense. Anyone who angrily posted online about it being Islamist terror had to be arrested and go to jail because that was a conspiracy theory, even if the evil perpetrator spent a lot of time on jihadi websites with helpful tips on slaughtering the enemies of Islam which, on reflection, yes, maybe, OK, that was terrorism, but it was a NEW KIND of terrorism that Sir Keir had just made up.

We’ve never had any terrorist attacks by lone-wolf misfits before, have we? Let me be very clear, as the PM always says when reaching for the How to Obfuscate on Unfortunate Side-Effects of Multiculturalism handbook: Starmer is on the hook for failing to level with the British people following the heinous murders of Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar. Hence the urgent, defensive statement. His argument that the three little girls would have been “denied justice” had he shared more information about the attacker was morally disgusting. It also has the significant disadvantage of being untrue.

The suffering of white working-class girls is a secondary consideration

When Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in June 2016, the public knew almost all the details of her killer within 48 hours. That didn’t prevent Thomas Mair being given a whole life-term, did it? The difference is Mair was a white, “far-Right terrorist” and the Left is keen on publicising the few individuals who fit that description because they help to distract attention from the source of the real terrorist threat to this country.

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In his speech on Tuesday, the PM finally conceded, in a slightly shifty, crab-like way, what many of us deduced at the time. He knew that Axel Rudakubana had been reported to Prevent, the counter-terrorism organisation, three times. Starmer and the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, will have been informed within hours of the massacre at a Taylor Swift holiday club, that ricin, a lethal bio-weapon, and an academic study of an al-Qaeda training manual had been found at Rudakubana’s home. (I am told the traumatised families were informed in August that a suspect substance had been discovered, but Merseyside Police didn’t trust the public with that knowledge until October.)

The Labour government wanted a tightly-controlled narrative about this highly combustible story. Pre-emptive attacks on the “far-Right” began even before any riots took place. As we know from the child-rape gangs scandal, the suffering of white working-class girls is a secondary consideration compared to avoiding the stirring up of racial hatred as well as wider discussion of the effect of mass immigration on female safety.

Two-tier Keir

On July 31, two days after the massacre, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, did her bit for Operation Denial, saying speculation that details were being kept from the public that the murders were an act of terrorism was “fake news” and “conspiracy theories”. Even three months later, at the end of October, when it emerged that senior Government figures had known for weeks that the Southport killer could face terror charges, the Home Secretary was still urging the public not to speculate on the case “in order to ensure justice for the families”. In order to spare you and the Government embarrassment, don’t you mean, Yvette?

How unfortunate for Sir Keir that, in September 2024, his own independent reviewer for terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, warned that an “information vacuum” after the Southport attacks had led to riots across the country. The public was entitled to know the motive behind the mass murder of children, Mr Hall said. As for jeopardising the trial, “Judges are very experienced in directing juries to put prejudicial information out of their minds.”

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Just the sort of wise insight you might have expected from someone who has been – ooh, I don’t know, let’s pick a job at random – Director of Public Prosecutions? It’s worth noting that Starmer had no hesitation in calling the Southport riots “far-Right thuggery” and promised to heavily punish all involved before anyone had been found guilty. Two-tier Keir. What else do you expect from this emotionally-inert man known to some relatives of the dead and injured children as Nineteen Seconds – the amount of time he spent laying a wreath in Southport as a distraught crowd demanded answers and cried, “How many more children, Prime Minister?”

Alice, Elsie and Bebe might be alive today. Not only if people had done their jobs, but if Sir Keir and the sanctimonious woke brigade had not fought every attempt to prioritise and root out Islamist terrorism. As Kemi Badenoch pointed out on X, while the Conservatives were trying to toughen up the Prevent anti-extremism programme, “Starmer and Cooper were running for office on manifestos worried about Prevent ‘alienating communities’.”

There, ladies and gentlemen, you have the problem in a nutshell. Official fear of alienating “communities” – and, believe me, they don’t mean white working-class communities with gorgeous little girls like Bebe, Alice and Elsie.

The PM said the public inquiry will ask “difficult questions, unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities”. I wouldn’t bet on it. Tiptoeing around cultural sensitivities is ingrained Labour behaviour. Cooper will be far happier banning harmful online content or sales of knives to minors than deporting Welsh choirboys who turn out to be Rwandan psychopaths.

How many more children, Prime Minister?

After the sentencing of Rudakubana on Thursday, details of the atrocities committed at that Taylor Swift dance club will start to become public. Nothing will prepare you for the horror of what he did to those little girls, the sheer blood-curdling savagery. Nothing.

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How were little British girls ever exposed to that kind of danger in a northern seaside town? Starmer says the Southport case marks a “line in the sand for Britain”. He promises a “fundamental change in how Britain protects its citizens and children”.

Why should we believe him? I know I don’t. All trust is gone. More than 36,000 people, the majority of them men, and many from cultures that despise Western women, who hate little girls who dance and sing along to Taylor Swift, entered our country by small boat in the past year. Starmer believes the human rights of those illegal migrants are equal to the rights of all the Elsies and Bebes and Alices.

He should resign before the people force him out. The stench of cover-up is overwhelming. How many more children, Prime Minister? How many more?