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Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty to the murder of three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at Southport on 29 July 2024, and to ten attempted murders as well as possessing al Qaeda literature and producing the poison ricin. He had been charged with murder on 31 July but police insisted then that the incident was not being treated as terror-related; the culprit was charged with two terrorism offences on 29 October. From 30 July, rioting had swept the country for a week. Now it was disclosed that the murderer had been referred three times to Prevent, the anti-terrorism programme, when he was 13 and 14. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, gave a press conference. ‘Terrorism has changed,’ he said, with ‘acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom.’ He said the murders were an act of ‘extreme violence, clearly intended to terrorise’. He said that releasing information about Rudakubana earlier could have meant the trial collapsing. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a public inquiry. Lord Carlile, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that the police should have disclosed after the murders that Rudakubana was not an immigrant.

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The Home Secretary had five days earlier announced a three-month national ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs to be undertaken by Dame Louise Casey, in addition to five new local inquiries. Piers Corbyn, 77, was among nine people charged with public order offences after a pro-Palestine rally during which conditions were breached that had limited it to Whitehall; his brother Jeremy, 75, was interviewed by police.