From a statement by Reform leader Nigel Farage MP:
Reform UK are today calling for the Director of Public Prosecutions at the CPS to resign.
The judge made clear in his sentencing that Axel Rudakubana had a detailed interest in genocides and massacres and that he was in possession of an Al-Qaeda manual.
This barbaric and senseless attack was clearly both political and ideological.
Many crimes of much less severity have been declared as terrorism within 24 hours of the incident taking place.
The British public needs to have confidence in the CPS and our police forces. Tens of millions of British citizens will find it incomprehensible how the CPS decided this was a non terror incident and maintained that position.
The word “clearly” there is intended to convey a sense that the point is so obvious that it doesn’t need spelling out, and that anyone expressing doubt is either colluding in a “cover up” or else foolish. As such, he doesn’t bother even to acknowledge what the judge actually said on this point:
Justice Goose confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause.
However, he told the packed courtroom that whether the “motivation was terrorism or not misses the point”.
“What he did on 29 July last year has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime”, the judge said.
“His culpability, and the harm he caused and intended, were at the highest.”
Farage’s implicit argument is that the Al-Qaeda manual explains everything, while evidence pointing elsewhere is irrelevant. He infers nothing from the the very obvious problem that the killer did not refer to Islam either when he was arrested (1) or when he appeared in court, or the from fact that there were no signs out outward Muslim identity (I recall prejudicial speculation online that in earlier hearings he had hidden his face to obscure a beard). There certainly are “mixed motive” terrorists, in which someone identifies with a cause to give their violent urges some spurious grandiosity, but this particular massacre has much more in common with the psychopathic actions of US school shooters.
According to the Guardian:
Police believe he may have copied the stabbing methods he used in the Southport attack from an al-Qaida training manual he admitted possessing. He is also believed to have used it to attempt to make ricin.
The above suggests that he consulted the manual as a “how to” guide rather than for ideological instruction.
It is notable that Farage does not reference Islam directly, despite dropping heavy hints. This fits a pattern of hedging: in July he referred to “reports” suggesting that the killer was being “monitored by the security services”, which gave spurious credibility to the internet rumour that the killer was an asylum seeker who was on an “MI6 watchlist” without investing his credibility in the claim (there were no “reports”, just a couple of news scraper sites that had churned Bernie Spofforth’s Tweet into a story). Then in November he said that “I know a hell of a lot more than the British public know” and that “We are witnessing one of the biggest cover ups we’ve ever seen in our lives” – whatever he meant by this, the effect was to give fuel to another bogus online rumour, that the killer’s father was a Rwandan war criminal who had been settled in the UK with the personal assistance of Keir Starmer (why the family would have kept their original name was not explained). After Rudakubana pleaded guilty, Farage’s underwhelming big reveal was that he had known before the public that the killer had been excluded from school for bringing in a knife.
Elsewhere, however, “radicalised by al-Qaeda” is the explicit narrative, promoted by the likes of Farage’s former Reform associate Ben Habib (in conversation with Jeremy Kyle on Talk TV) and by Dan Wootton. Apparently Tommy Robinson has told Wootton from inside Belmarsh Prison that Rudakubana attends Islamic prayers, and Wootton also claims that the attacks were attempted beheadings. According to the judge a pathologist thought that in one case the injuries suggested this (2), but Wootton’s claim is an extrapolation that does not take into account the generalised stabbing spree that occured. Wootton also claims to have seen messages between Rudakubana and former classmates, but he doesn’t provide any information from them that might support a “radicalisation” thesis.
Also on board is Douglas Murray, who made a video statement claiming that the trial had been “pre-emptively” halted by the killer’s guilty plea. Murray’s lack of care for details (seen before) was typified by his misidentifcation of Rudakubana as “the son of Nigerian immigrants to the UK” (a significant error given that half of Nigeria’s population is Muslim, compared to a very small minority in Rwanda).
Alongside this is a more generalised cover-up narrative, based on reporting restrictions that applied before the killer turned 18 years old and then before the trial. In response to the false claim that the killer was an asylum seeker who had arrived last year, the police made a statement in early August that he had been born in Wales – accusers claim that this deliberately misrepresented him as a “Welshman”, or as a “Welsh choirboy”. Previous instances where a terrorist context was self-evident and described as such are presented as proof that things could and should have been done differently; there is also an incoherent claim that details were suppressed that somehow exonerate rioters who targeted mosques and asylum seekers. A grotesque and trivialising cartoon posted online shows Starmer as Rudakubana, wearing a jumper that is pulled up partially over his face. The issues around the legal restrictions are discussed by Joshua Rozenberg here and by Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail here.
Notes
1. Since the summer a screenshot of a WhatApp message has been circulated on Twitter/X, in which an unnamed “retired bissy [police officer] in Formby” supposedly claims to have information that Rudakubana had “been radicalized recently” and on arrest had said “Ive done what Allah wanted , please don’t hurt me”. This anonymous claim is not reflected in what has now been reported:
Deanna Heer KC, leading the prosecution, now says…There is no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology – he wasn’t fighting for a cause.
…While under arrest at the police station after the incident, Rudakubana was heard to say: “It’s a good thing those children are dead… I’m so glad… so happy.”
2. That detail from the judge was noted on Twitter/X by GB News, although their on-the-ground reporter Mark White said that they had taken the decision “not to go into a great deal of detail about exactly what this man did inside that building” – Wootton, who was previously fired by the channel, sneered that “GB News joins the Southport Massacre cover up”. In fact White, who later choked up during a live segment, was respecting the wishes of the victims’ families. Wootton also found time to abuse the presenters of the News Agents podcast for not having done a show about Southport, taking his lead from Mike Graham.
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