Axel Rudakubana, the 18-year-old who murdered three young girls – and injured many more – in Southport last summer, has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years (effectively a life sentence) in prison.
Just as they did back in July 2024, when the stabbings took place, political leaders in Westminster are cynically exploiting this issue for their own ends.
Crooks like Nigel Farage, along with charlatans like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson, have used this as an opportunity to spew their usual xenophobic bile, as they did during the racist riots that followed the murders.
Closely in tow – not wanting to lose any more ground to Farage – is Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who has blamed immigrants for insufficient “integration”, decrying that Rudakubana “should have been in love with this country”.
And then there is Keir Starmer, who has also blamed a “lack of integration”, and has pledged to widen the remit of counter-terrorism legislation, and strengthen the powers of the state.
As he sees it, these murders are merely another opportunity to win Labour some political points for being ‘tough’ on law and order and migration.
Simply put, none of these self-serving politicians care one iota about the victims of this tragedy. To them, this is yet another convenient political football to kick around; another opportunity to whip up a culture war against immigrants, to distract and divide the working class.
No trust in the state
Rudakubana was known to the authorities for many years before he carried out the attack, having been first identified as being a potential threat to others when he was in school.
The state’s ‘Prevent’ scheme – which was supposedly designed to identify this kind of behaviour early on – completely failed to do its job.
This is because Prevent has nothing to do with identifying dangerous behaviour. It is used to suppress anti-establishment views – particularly on the left – amongst young people, and to demonise and criminalise Muslims.
Rudakubana was referred to Prevent three times over his time in the education system. Two of those referrals were due to his interest in school shootings and terrorist attacks.
Furthermore, he had been referred to the Multi-Agency Safeguard Hub – which is supposed to safeguard vulnerable people – the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Childline, local social services, and the police on multiple occasions.
In the leadup to the murders, his parents had called the police numerous times out of fear that he may go on to do something dangerous.
Once again, we can see that despite their pledges to ‘protect and serve’ local communities, the police do not keep us safe.
In fact, as an institution, they are one of the most prolific abusers and murderers of women and girls out there, as we saw with the case of Sarah Everard in 2021. Between 2016 and 2021 alone there were over 750 allegations of sexual misconduct made against the police.
Fundamentally, the police exist as a pillar of the capitalist state; the sworn defenders of an oppressive status quo.
They are far more concerned with arresting Palestine protesters, harassing black, Asian, and working-class youth, and protecting abusers within their own ranks than they are with keeping communities safe.
We therefore should have no trust in more powers being handed carte blanche to the police, nor in schemes like Prevent. Expanding the power of their state – such as by broadening the definition of terrorism, as Starmer wishes to do – will do nothing to prevent future tragedies.
Opportunistic politicians are consciously exploiting the murder of three children in order to strengthen the very tools that they will use to attack the working class in the future.
They do this by whipping the public into a state of fear about menacing criminals at large when, in fact, they are the most dangerous criminals in society.
Unfortunately, due to the absence of any real solutions offered by the left, the xenophobic bile of crooks like Farage can gain a certain echo.
Social decline and alienation
There are countless articles giving in-depth descriptions of every aspect of Rudakubana’s life, looking to unlock the secret of how somebody could commit such an act.
Many have blamed the internet, pointing to how easy it is to access conspiracy theories, twisted ‘incel’ communities, and content that proliferates violence against women.
It is true that the internet is rife with this kind of material. But why is it that such ideas are taking root amongst a small section of incredibly isolated youth? Where does this social sickness come from?
Until recently, the phenomena of mass killings by ‘lone wolves’ has been isolated mainly to the United States, where school shootings are tragically common.
But such acts are beginning to appear here in Britain, too. It was only four years ago that another mass killing of a similar nature was carried out in Plymouth.
It was also four years ago that Tory MP David Amess was murdered during a constituency surgery, and nine years since Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death during the Brexit campaign.
In each instance, these were carried out by ‘lone wolves’ with no clear affiliation to any organised group.
The system is in crisis all over the world, and this is felt particularly acutely in Britain, where deep austerity policies have torn the very fabric of society apart.
The NHS has been cut intensely over the past two decades, and is now reaching a breaking point. Mental health and social services have received the brunt of these attacks.
Many gutted-out local social services have also been outsourced and privatised, exacerbating the chaos within them. This has provoked an enormous shortage of workers, as staff leave the sector in droves.
Additionally, in England alone, youth services have been cut by 73 percent since 2011.
The same goes for education, where crumbling schools, overworked teachers, and the sheer prevalence of mental health problems, malnutrition, and sickness among pupils, makes it easier than ever for children and young adults like Rudakubana to slip through the cracks.
In a society that is coming apart at the seams, it is no wonder that a deep feeling of alienation is weighing down upon a certain layer of young people.
Add on top of all of this the racist bullying that Rudakubana reportedly faced throughout his childhood, and you can begin to see the conditions that led this person down a dark, twisted rabbit hole of online violence.
Of course, none of this excuses the actions of individuals like Rudakubana. What it does mean, however, is that the conditions are there for more people to fall down a similar path, regardless of the individual motives of the killer in this case.
A system in decay
This tragedy had nothing to do with immigration or Islamism – as right-wing reactionaries like Farage, Musk, and Badenoch spout. Nor was it about the “failures of integration” or “a country slowly turning away from itself”, as Starmer claimed in his speech.
Capitalist society is rife with crisis and decay, and this is expressed in many ways. One example is the mental health crisis, which particularly affects young people. Rates of mental illness have skyrocketed in recent years.
Children today are growing up in a world of war, environmental collapse, and general instability. And the severe mental health issues this nightmare causes are left unchecked due to cuts and neglect.
In the USA, for example, the number of school shootings rose sharply in the years following the 2008 crash, and were far lower in the past.
Similar trends exists for drug-related deaths, sexual violence, hate crimes, and many other social ills. It is clear that something is deeply wrong with society.
Whilst there are many factors at play that can compel somebody to go down this dark path, the underlying social decline is driven by a system that has far outlived its time, and offers the world nothing but continued despair and agony.
Put simply, a monstrous system breeds monstrous events. And when all of the institutions that are supposed to keep us safe and well crumble to pieces, it makes tragedies like this all but inevitable.
