No words can express brutality of Southport murders but I won’t duck questions about why this act was allowed to happen
THE Southport murders were a moment of horror for Britain.
Truly, no words come close to expressing the evil brutality of what happened there.
The murderer’s conviction this week was welcome.
But it cannot end the pain and trauma of the families who lost daughters and victims who were injured.
Nor can it be used as an excuse to duck legitimate questions about how this appalling act was allowed to happen.
I want to be crystal clear with Sun readers — I will not let that happen.
Fourteen years ago, I was the prosecutor who first spotted failures in grooming cases when I led the Crown Prosecution Service. And I acted.
As the country’s lead prosecutor, I ensured that the rape gangs in Rochdale were brought to justice.
My approach as Prime Minister will be the same.
Whatever shortcomings are holding back Britain’s ability to protect its citizens and its children — I will find them. I will root them out.
And then, no matter who it upsets, I will act. Because my duty now is to make sure the victims of this case are no longer associated with the monster who killed them.
But instead to make sure this horrific moment leads to change.
That starts with a public inquiry to quickly establish exactly what went wrong. Already, the details are shocking.
Throughout his youth, the murderer consistently showed a grim fascination with extreme violence.
Three times he was referred to the Prevent programme, designed to stop people being drawn into terrorism.
Once in 2019. Twice in 2021. Yet on all three occasions, he was not referred any further. Why, must be the first question of the inquiry.
The second concerns the issue of terrorism. And I’m afraid the blunt truth here is that this case is a terrible warning sign. Because Britain now faces a grave new threat.
Terrorism has changed. In the past, the main threat was highly organised groups, with a clear political intent. Groups like Al-Qaeda and the IRA. That threat is still there and we will face it head-on.
Difficult questions
But now, alongside it, we also have to guard against extreme violence perpetrated by loners and misfits — a growing cohort of young men who can access all manner of sick material online.
Sometimes, as in this case, they may even draw inspiration from terrorist methodology. But the extreme violence they fixate upon seems to drive them purely for its own sake.
Southport must become a line in the sand for Britain
It may be that people like this are harder to spot. But we can’t shrug our shoulders and accept that. We have to be ready to face every threat.
When I look at the details of this case, I understand why people wonder what words mean if this isn’t “terrorism”.
After all, there is no doubt that attacking young children in a place of joy and safety is terrifying — that was part of the intent. So we will review every aspect of our counter-extremism approach to make sure we can defeat it.
That will mean difficult questions about how to protect our children from the tidal wave of violent videos online.
It will mean showing zero tolerance for institutional or cultural sensitivities that prevent the search for truth.
We must ask why the rights and responsibilities we owe to each other no longer seem to hold weight.
Children no longer attending school. Young people opting out of work.
Parallel lives in our communities. Too many people are falling between the cracks in our society.
But it must also mean finally getting to grips with something more straightforward.
Because it remains shockingly easy for our children to get their hands on deadly knives. The lessons of this case could not be clearer.
Time and again, as a child, the Southport murderer carried knives. Time and again, he showed clear intent to use them.
And yet tragically, he was still able to order the murder weapon off of the internet without any checks or barriers. A two-click killer. This cannot continue.
The technology is there to set up age-verification checks, even for kitchen knives ordered online.
There are deep wounds in our society politics now has a responsibility to heal
We must now use it to protect our children from future attack and I will ensure that this happens.
Because Southport must become a line in the sand for Britain.
There are deep wounds in our society politics now has a responsibility to heal.
But that starts by holding up the mirror and facing what we see.
That is the very least we owe the Southport families.