Keir Starmer defends actions after being blasted for Southport ‘cover-up’ as he admits knowing details

The Prime Minister has defended his actions after he was blasted with accusations of being part of a Southport “cover-up” while he admitted knowing details of the attack.His statement has followed his earlier admission that the British state failed the three girls who had been brutally murdered by Axel Rudakubana at a Taylor Swift dance class last summer.Starmer said that Southport “must be a line in the sand”, although “nothing will be off the table in this inquiry”, insisting that it will lead to change.He continued: “I know people will be watching right now, and they’ll be saying, we’ve heard all this before, the promises, the sorrow, the inquiry that comes and goes, and inability to change that frankly, has become the oxygen for wider conspiracy.“And we’ve seen that throughout this case – a suggestion that there has been a cover up.“I want to put on record that yesterday’s guilty verdict only happened because hundreds, if not thousands, of dedicated public servants worked towards it, many of whom endured absolutely harrowing circumstances, particularly in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.“That is their job. They are brilliant at it.”Rudakubana, from Lancashire, pleaded guilty yesterday to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, on July 29 last year.It has now emerged that Rudakubana had been referred – on three occasions – to Prevent, which is the Government’s scheme to prevent terrorist violence.LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:Keir Starmer to address the nation on Axel Rudakubana after full horrors of teen’s past revealedPublic inquiry announced after failures of anti-extremism scheme to prevent Southport murdersSuella Braverman rages at ‘idiot’ Keir Starmer after Labour’s ‘ridiculous’ Donald Trump moveIt had earlier emerged that Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, the Government’s scheme to stop terrorist violence. One of the earlier references were made after there was concern surrounding Rudakubana’s potential interest in murdering children in a school massacre.Yesterday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that, after the guilty plea, “the families and the people of Southport need answers about what happened leading up to this attack”.Regarding such an inquiry, the PM said: “I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure, failure, which in this case, frankly leaps off the page.”He warned there were also questions of “accountability” for the Whitehall and Westminster system, “which is far too often driven by circling the institutional wagons, that does not react until justice is either hard won by campaigners or until appalling tragedies like this finely spur a degree of action”.“Time and again, we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it – I am angry about it.”

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