Rudakubana killed six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar. He tried to kill others by stabbing them in the back as they fled. By 11:59 he had been arrested but said nothing when formally questioned by police.

SIR Keir Starmer has said the Southport killings “must be a line in the sand for Britain”. The Prime Minister addressed the nation on Tuesday morning, after Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty on Monday to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.

Sir Keir Starmer has said the failure of state institutions in the case of child-killer Axel Rudakubana “frankly leaps off the page”. The 18-year-old, from Banks in Lancashire, pleaded guilty on Monday (January 20) to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport,

Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, suggested that the Southport attacks were not terror-related and previously accused Nigel Farage of spreading “fake news” about the perpetrator.

Sir Keir said it was "clearly wrong" Rudakubana was deemed not to meet the threshold for intervention from the Prevent programme, and the Southport victims' families had been failed. The prime minister said the Southport attack "must be a line in the sand" and "nothing will be off the table" in the public inquiry.