One year on from Southport, Sir Keir remains as clueless as ever

Telegraph

3 days ago

On the first anniversary of the murders that shook the nation, there will be a three-minute silence.
Quite rightly, a great deal of thought has gone into how best to mark this dreadful occasion, and the families of the little girls who were stabbed to death in Southport have made their wishes plain. Instead of candlelit vigils and floral tributes, they are encouraging donations to charities set up in their loved ones' names.
Elsie's Story, Bebe's Hive, and Alice's WonderDance all do lovely things in memory of those who did not survive Axel Rudakubana's rampage.
However, the real power to ensure the deaths of the little girls were not in vain lies with the Government. The best possible legacy of the tragedy would be a safer, less divided Britain, led by a Prime Minister who clearly understands why the country erupted.
One year after the killings, that premier ought to be able to stand up and declare that nothing quite like it could happen again. Instead, the country once again teeters on the brink of civil strife – and Sir Keir Starmer does not appear to have learnt a single lesson.
Hopefully, the public inquiry that opens today will produce some useful pointers about how to protect society from violent nutters. Doubtless, there will be recommendations for schools, mental health services, and the counter-terror programme, Prevent.
However, the investigation is focused on the killer himself and events leading up to the killings.
But what really matters in terms of public policy is what happened after his violent rampage. What the extraordinary public reaction revealed was that from the moment Starmer took office, this country was already at boiling point with illegal immigration.
To all but the most rabid Left-wing observers, it was blindingly obvious that the crisis the new Prime Minister faced had very little to do with racists who had got the wrong end of the stick about the identity of the killer – and everything to do with the previous government's failures over immigration.
This should have been the moment that Starmer realised that his new administration would have to stop the boats. It was the starkest imaginable warning of the possible consequences of failing to do so.
It should have reinforced his determination to make good on his party's manifesto pledges on immigration.
Instead, he and his Cabinet sought to dismiss the protests as the thuggish response of the far-Right, and set about making an example out of a minority of protesters who behaved badly. So far from doing whatever it takes to stop the boats, they have allowed a further 47,000 to pour across the Channel – who knows how many criminals and terrorists are among them.
A year on from Southport, hundreds, if not thousands, of rapes, violent assaults, and other terrible crimes are still linked to our broken asylum system – leaving many communities more frightened, angry, and divided than ever.
Granted, Starmer had been in office less than one month when he found himself battling to regain control of the country – a terrible shock for any new premier.
Rudakubana was neither a Muslim, nor a recent arrival to this country. In that respect, the ugly scenes that unfolded up and down the country outside migrant hotels were based on a fallacy.
However, the many decent, law-abiding people who took to the streets in fury – along with millions of other silent supporters – were quite right to smell a cover-up. As many suspected, there was a terror element to the attack, and the culprit was not exactly a 'Cardiff man'.
It would later emerge that his Rwandan parents were granted asylum by the Blair government, and their troubled teen 'absolutely obsessed with genocides' – a dark reminder that when we bring in people from war-torn countries, we import their trauma.
All the Prime Minister seemed to wanted to do, was to make it all go away as fast as possible. Hiding behind the pretence that making basic facts public might prejudice Rudakubana's trial, ministers went out of their way to conceal the most incendiary information – behaviour that (according to terror watchdog Jonathan Hall KC), might very well have made matters worse.
From this terrible tragedy, police and prosecutors too might have learnt a great deal about the importance of being seen to treat people of all skin colours and religions equally – and how little it takes for peaceful protests to turn violent.
Yet examples of two-tier justice continue to abound. Almost unbelievably, one police force even stands accused of bussing Left-wing activists to an asylum hotel in Essex – practically guaranteeing trouble.
Starmer has had a whole year to reflect on these lessons. Yet the only time he came remotely close to indicating he understood the mood of the nation he backtracked.
And so we are where we are – amid a new wave of protests about migrants.
Starmer's reaction this time? He has instructed a crack team of cops to monitor social media for 'anti-migrant' sentiments.
Is any further proof needed that this man just doesn't get it?