This week we all came to understand the motives of a deranged monster who slaughtered three beautiful girls and delivered life-threatening injuries to many others.
And I am angry. I am angry that yet again the State has failed to keep us safe.
I’m a good law-abiding citizen. I respect the rule of law, and I respect the institutions that discharge their obligations under the law. I don’t believe in conspiracies. And when my Prime Minister and my Home Secretary say something, I want to trust and believe them. Whatever the Party is that they are elected to represent.
That trust has been undermined by what happened at Stockport and its aftermath.
The Prime Minister told us on Tuesday that these events represented a new threat. Men who are loners and social misfits are being radicalised in their bedrooms.
But there is nothing new about that threat. My former colleagues Jo Cox and Sir David Amess were assassinated by lone operators.
It is shocking that on this occasion Rudakabana was referred to Prevent three times. His family had reported him to the authorities. How could it not have been realised that this was a dangerous man?
It has been suggested that ideology was not a motivation here. But we hear that this was a man who immersed himself in material relating to genocide and perpetrating a terrorist attack. Books with anti-colonial content. His behaviour at school indicated a disturbed and violent individual.
Just because something doesn’t neatly tick the box of Islamic extremism or far-right activity does not mean it isn’t potentially terrorist. Take the incel culture for example. And we are all the product of our background and heritage. It isn’t racist to consider whether racial heritage is influencing behaviour. Are our law enforcement agencies so determined to be colour-blind and to avoid accusations of discrimination that they are ignoring what is staring them in the face? This is a man whose family have escaped a genocidal country, and this might just have shaped his beliefs.
There is a similarity here with the rape and grooming gangs. A failure to properly confront the fact that imported views and attitudes can be at odds with our own. No amount of respect for cultural heritage can ever excuse the systematic abuse of girls. Taken together, we need to get real and give all our law enforcement agencies a real shake-up.
We must confront difficult questions following grooming gangs scandal and Southport, writes Dame Jackie Doyle-Price
Getty Images/PA
Do I trust Keir Starmer to do this? I ought to be able to. This is a man who knows the criminal justice system and who has seen terrible excuses for humanity cross his desk as Director of Public Prosecutions. But I have to say that the jury is out. That press conference on Tuesday did not fill me with confidence.
Our Prime Minister is very good at accounting for his own role in events. I saw rather less about action. Of course, we have a public inquiry. But that is just an exercise in kicking the can down the road. By the time we find out who is to blame, the Country will have moved on.
From the day this atrocity took place, there has been less honesty than there ought to have been to the British public. It is not surprising that there were demonstrations in Southport.
People can see when they are being deceived and will take matters into their own hands when they are. Make no mistake, these events have delivered a hammer blow to public trust, and it will take more than an 8.30 press conference from the Prime Minister to repair it.