Why the British media has been so silent about the Southport attacks

There are certain rules in British public life that are worth noting. Such as this one: if someone is killed by a jihadist or someone who could plausibly be connected to immigration in any way, the British public will not be informed of the possible motive — or at least not until it becomes impossible to conceal it any longer.

Certain rules follow on from this. One is that “wise” heads will inform anyone who does mention a likely motive that they must be exceptionally careful not to prejudice any forthcoming trial. There then comes an insistence that there will be a time and a place to debate these things. Quite often, that time and place never arrives.

We have seen this enough times now, from the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby to the murder of Sir David Amess; from the Ariana Grande concert attack to the Taylor Swift dance class massacre. This last has come back to the fore with a suggestive revelation this week. Readers may recall that back in July a maniac went into a children’s dance workshop in Southport and started knifing the participants. Three young girls — Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar (aged six, seven and nine) — died of their injuries. Many others had life-changing wounds.

For the time being, it is safe to say that such horrors are relatively uncommon in the UK. We do not have such attacks on a daily basis, so it is inevitable that as well as being angry, the British public might be curious about how such a grotesque and unusual attack could occur. But the police seemed strangely unwilling to release any information. And this is when people can surmise something with considerable accuracy: if the attacker had been a far-right extremist of the kind we are told is so common in our country, and had shouted “I’m doing this for Oswald Mosley,” then we would have heard about it. If the attacker had said “All Taylor Swift fans must be killed” we might also have heard of it. But there was silence.

Eventually there was a coy statement that Sky News and other media eunuchs were all too pleased to report — which was that the suspect was from Cardiff. “Ah,” we might all say, “a typical Welshman.” Except that nobody does think that. People knew that there must be more. Soon it was revealed that the attacker was of Rwandan heritage, at which point all the anti-speculation people said: “You see, nothing to see here.” After some furious googling, these same people pointed out that Rwanda is a majority-Christian country and that in any case the suspect was the child of immigrants, and not a recent arrival on an illegal boat. Meaning that the identity of the attacker didn’t matter, because one dogma of the multicultural state is that once you are in Britain you become as British as roast beef, whether you originated here or not.

When the name of eighteen-year-old Axel Rudakubana was released, the eunuch media had another trick, which was to publish a picture of the suspect many years earlier as a young schoolboy. Not as young as his victims, but still young.

By this point, angry protestors were on the streets of numerous cities. Some people violently attacked a police car, a police station, a mosque and a hotel that was housing illegal immigrants. It was disgraceful and a number of people were promptly sent to prison for this. But others were arrested because they had “speculated” on social media about the attacker or spread “false news” implying the attacker may be Muslim.

Then this week, after a conveniently long period of time, some more information finally came out, including the fact that the suspect was in possession of al Qaeda training manuals and had tried to make the deadly toxin ricin. These are telling details and are important for Rudakubana’s trial. But the authorities must have known this months ago — indeed, within hours of getting into Rudakubana’s house — meaning that people who were heavily criticized for spreading “fake news” about the potential motive of the attacker now turn out to have said something that seems likely to have been true.

If one was to be cynical for a moment, one might say that the police and government knew that the slaughter of three girls under the age of ten at a dance school in Southport is an emotive matter for the general public. It is the sort of thing we do not like. And so because the public cannot be trusted with facts the authorities seem to have once again decided that the public must not be given the facts. The only problem with which is that the public is not as stupid as the authorities seem to think.

Like many other people I look forward very much to the day when we get to find out where the truth really lies. Meanwhile, the question of what to do with the deeper underlying problem will doubtless once again be postponed until someone else is in charge of the country and the situation is worse.

Which brings me to the Conservative leadership race. By the time many readers get to this column, you will know who has won. But here is a thought. Both Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch have allowed much of the conversation about the historic and unsustainable levels of immigration (legal and illegal) in our country to be limited to whether or not we should leave the ECHR. It is strange, because many of our European counterparts, including France and Italy, who are also signatories, regularly ignore the ECHR and deport people whenever they like. They also know that in any case the current laws and conventions are unfit for societies that are fraying badly under the strain.

It will need more than legal tinkering to address this problem. The Starmer government hopes it can get through it by locking up anyone who notices the problem. Anyone hoping to form the next Conservative government should realize that it is too late in the day for that. And that “cannot” is a word that sovereign governments should ignore.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.