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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Comment
Editorial

The prime minister showed steely authority as he pushed back on ‘cover-up’ claims over the Southport killings

Sir Keir Starmer was right to get out ahead of those who see conspiracies and cover-ups everywhere – to try to set out in calm and reasonable language how determined he is to try to stop future attacks like the Southport murders.

There are obviously limits to what he and the authorities can do, but he needs to reassure the public. Hence, his morning statement from Downing Street the day after the guilty plea from the murderer brought the court case to an unexpected and sudden end.

He set out some of the early lessons of the failure of the police, social services and schools, who were aware of Axel Rudakubana as a potential problem. The teenager did not fit into the conventional view of terrorism, Sir Keir said, because his motivation appeared to be more an obsession with violence than an ideology.

He said that Rudakubana’s case was more like mass shootings in schools in America than “the sort of behaviour we’ve associated with terrorism” such as al-Qaeda, “which tended to be more organised, in groups with a clear political ideology or motive”.

This seems to be part of the explanation for why it was so difficult to predict that Rudakubana would kill, and Sir Keir was right to be open about his thoughts on the case. He is well aware that there are people such as Nigel Farage who are reckless about stoking the public’s fears in order to make political arguments.

Mr Farage is still talking about a “cover-up”, which is the kind of dangerous language that allows conspiracy theories to flourish. The prime minister is aware of the danger of leaving a vacuum that might be filled with such paranoid thinking, and so he announced an inquiry straight away yesterday, and held a press conference this morning.

He has learned from the way that Mr Farage, from his GB News platform, used the government’s reluctance to hold another inquiry into grooming gangs to suggest that No 10 was not being open with people. He was forced to U-turn on that, asking Louise Casey, the no-nonsense peer, to conduct a short, sharp investigation.

This time, he has tried to pre-empt the accusations that the authorities knew things about Rudakubana but withheld them, allegedly in an attempt to avoid inflaming xenophobia. He explained that the rules on what can be disclosed before a court case are designed to ensure that victims get the justice they deserve.

It may be, inevitably, that there is a reasonable debate to be had about whether the authorities could have disclosed more information without prejudicing the trial. But Mr Farage and his allies are not interested in reasonable debate. They want to portray the police and the government as being engaged in what Richard Tice, Farage’s Reform UK colleague, called “the mother of all cover-ups”.

Mr Tice’s seriousness can be measured by his criticism of Sir Keir in the next breath, for holding an inquiry into the case “to kick the can down the road”, when he and Mr Farage have only just demanded an inquiry into grooming gangs.

Mr Farage and Mr Tice are not only unserious – their promotion of conspiracy theories is dangerous. There is always a ready market for populists who tell people that their government is lying to them. However, there is a difference between public bodies that are malign and those that are incompetent or that fall short of the standards that citizens have a right to expect. Undermining confidence in any and all public servants will get in the way of efforts to prevent horrors like the Southport killings from happening again.

The prime minister is right to do what he can to set out the facts, patiently and carefully. He may come across as a lawyer or a bureaucrat. He is not given to theatrical displays of emotion. But he spoke authentically of his revulsion at the murders and of his determination to address the state failures that may have allowed them to happen.

In this, he may seem to be promising more than he can deliver, as any dispassionate analysis of the risks of lone actors is bound to reveal how hard it is to detect and divert those bent on violence.

But it is essential that the prime minister shows that he is being as open as possible; that he is determined that the authorities learn from the gaps in their understanding of the nature of the threat; and that he denies space, as much as possible, to those intent on spreading fear.

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