Starmer’s scapegoating is downright silly

“THE AMAZON KILLER,” screams the Sun headline above a photo of the Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana. Rudakubana, we are told, “was able to buy knives on Amazon in seconds despite being just 17 with a history of violence”.

“Time and again, as a child, the Southport murderer carried knives,” says Prime Minister Starmer (in an op-ed for The Sun, which its reporting, in a cheerful coincidence, closely reflects): 

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.

At last! The real villain has emerged: Amazon! Rudakubana would have surely been a mild-mannered adolescent were it not for the call of online retailers. Had he not been able to purchase a blade online, it’s impossible to imagine him being able to snatch a weapon from his mother’s knife block or his father’s toolbox. All would have been well were it not for Jeff Bezos and his “two click” tricks.

It is fair to say that something must have gone wrong for the teenage Rudakubana to have been able to purchase a knife online. Proof of age is meant to be required on delivery. But it is not fair, or reasonable, to reduce his psychopathic crimes to his weapon of choice.  

Granted, Prime Minister Starmer also mentions the fact that Rudakubana was referred to the Prevent programme three times without being considered suitable for the counter-radicalisation scheme. This is a valid thing to investigate.

At the risk of being hyper-critical, though, I think it is bizarre for Starmer to claim that it should be “the first question” of a public inquiry. The first question? How about this one: what was Rudakubana’s family doing in Britain in the first place? 

Online articles have given the distinct though not necessarily deliberate impression that his parents were fleeing the Rwandan Genocide. In fact, his parents arrived in 2002 — eight years after the event. Indeed, his father is reported to have fought for the Rwandan Patriotic Army and to have links to the nation’s longtime ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. On what grounds were the Rudakubanas given a home in Britain? This is not to blame the parents for the sins of the son. None of us should assume that our children could never fly off the rails. But the fact remains that if they did not live in Britain, Rudakubana would have never threatened Southport. That his crimes could not have been predicted in 2002 does not mean that they should have no bearing on future immigration policies.

It is preposterous to think that we can protect ourselves from violent men simply by removing their tools

Secondly, what made Rudakubana such an unstable person to begin with? Mental illness, I’m sure (with it being sad and notable that psychotic disorders are unusually common among black men). But what else? Rudakubana was apparently obsessed with violence — terrorism, despots and genocide. Starmer bangs on about young people’s ability to “access all manner of sick material online”, but while it is certainly true that social media platforms could do a better job of suppressing what amount to snuff films, how could we stop young people accessing information about Genghis Khan, Hitler and the Rwandan Genocide (as Rudakubana is alleged to have done)? Is a better question not why young men might be so embittered and alienated that their natural interest in the darker side of world events mutates into a source of twisted inspiration?

Thirdly, how might other institutions have failed here? The police and children’s charities encountered Rudakubana time and time again, including when he broke another student’s wrist with a hockey stick. What more could have been done? Maybe nothing. Ultimately, there are more unstable men in Britain than state services can fully deal with. But the question still deserves to be asked. 

It is preposterous to think that we can protect ourselves from violent men simply by removing their tools. (Are Britons going to be eating their meals with plastic cutlery?) Sadly, it is unsurprising from a political and media class which rarely fails to ask irrelevant questions. One recalls how the jihadist murder of David Amess prompted inane discourse about people rude to politicians online — something which had had nothing to do with Sir David’s appalling death.

Still, one has to respect the balls on Starmer. He’s already being attacked by Elon Musk and now he has decided to pick a fight with Jeff Bezos. I don’t see the point but it’s certainly audacious.