Axel Rudakubana could have been stopped. Why wasn’t he?
The monster of Southport – and his enablers
To say that Axel Rudakubana was ‘known to the authorities’ is an understatement. It’s hard to name an authority that he wasn’t known to. The police, social services, mental-health services, counter-extremism services – he was on all of their radars. Rudakubana was excluded from secondary school after admitting to carrying a knife on at least 10 occasions. He later returned, breaking a pupil’s wrist with a hockey stick. The police first found out about him from Childline, after he called up saying he wanted to kill someone.
Even now, in the wake of the most horrific murders England has witnessed in the 21st century, the establishment cannot look its problems in the face. It would rather launch a crusade against social media, or rail against Amazon for selling Rudakubana his knife, than reckon with its own catastrophic failures and the nihilism that is too often being nurtured in our midst.