The truth about the myths and misinformation surrounding the Southport attack

Good morning. After the horrifying murders of three young girls in Southport last summer, an obvious question presented itself: was there anything we knew about the attacker that might shed light on how this could have happened? After a summer of far-right riots and then a long wait for the legal process to unfold, this week we finally got more clarity on the answers.

At Liverpool crown court on Monday, Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine. His unexpected decision lifted some of the restrictions around contempt of court that have applied to the case, since there was no longer a risk of prejudicing a jury trial. The Guardian was able to reveal that Rudakubana, 18, had been referred to the counter-extremism scheme Prevent three times, but that he was not viewed as a terrorist threat.

The government has now said that it will overhaul terrorism laws to better account for “lone individualised killers” without a clear ideology and push social media companies to remove more online violent content. But in a press conference yesterday, Keir Starmer also sought to deal with the cover-up claims that have been a persistent feature of this story from the beginning.

Today’s newsletter looks back on how those claims gained traction, and what we now know about the reality behind them. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: Disinformation circulated online with scant regard for the law

To understand the claims of a cover-up over Southport that have been driven back to the top of the news agenda, you first have to understand two separate claims that were made – and how they have been elided, with the one creating space for the other.

Here’s what you need to know.

What was the initial wave of disinformation?

After the 29 July attack, but before Rudakubana had been identified, claims began to circulate online saying that the suspect was an immigrant who had come to the UK by crossing the Channel in a small boat.

Police said later the same day that a name in circulation was incorrect, and noted that the suspect had been born in Cardiff. Despite that intervention, the rumours continued to spread, fuelled by the far right. The next day, and as the frenzy continued, Nigel Farage posted a video in which he mentioned “reports” that the suspect was being monitored by the security services. “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” he said. “I don’t know the answer to that: I think it’s a fair and legitimate question.”

On 1 August, the judge at Liverpool crown court lifted restrictions that prevented Rudakubana from being identified, citing the “idiotic rioting” as the public interest reason to do so. The anonymity order would in any case have expired a week later, when he turned 18.

What were the subsequent claims of a cover-up?

The “fair and legitimate question” asked by Farage was an early feature of another set of claims, superficially unrelated to the false narrative that the attacker was an immigrant – but, of course, entering into the same fevered atmosphere.

These claims were about whether the government and police were withholding other information about Rudakubana that the public had a right to know. When the attack happened, the police said that it was not terror-related – but during the subsequent investigation, the biological toxin ricin was found at his home, as well as a PDF document file titled The Al-Qaeda Training Manual.

While those discoveries led to Rudakubana being charged under terror laws, police said that the Southport attack itself was still not categorised as a terrorist incident, because motive had not been established as part of the murder charges brought.

That led to many on the right asking what Keir Starmer and the government knew of these discoveries in the days after the riots, and why the message from police was that the attack was not terror-related. Robert Jenrick, then a Conservative leadership candidate, said “the legal process needs to be respected but I am seriously concerned that facts may have been withheld from the public here”.

His then leadership rival Kemi Badenoch did not go quite that far, but said: “There are serious questions to be asked of the police, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and also of Keir Starmer’s response to the whole situation.” Prominent front page coverage in the next day’s newspapers amplified those claims.

So was it a cover-up?

That is the claim still being made by Farage and his allies: on Monday, he posted a new video about Rudakubana’s referrals to Prevent and said: “The cover-up has been a disgrace. I was right all along.” On the timing of his initial intervention, when the frenzy over the false claims about the suspect were at their zenith, the Reform leader had nothing to say.

But if “cover-up” means a voluntary withholding of information that ought to be public, probably with an eye on political or professional advantage, then the answer is clear: no.

The initial disinformation is straightforward to deal with: those claims were untrue, and demonstrably dangerous, in that they fuelled the riots that convulsed much of the UK in the aftermath of the attack.

There was a window of a few hours as the rumours circulated before the police said that the suspect was not an immigrant. But since that information might have dispelled the disinformation rather than showing it to be true, and since there was no visible benefit to keeping it quiet, we can probably attribute that to flat-footed media management while dealing with a terrible crime.

The second claim, that information showing that Rudakubana was a terrorist was maliciously withheld, needs a bit more unpacking.

There are two issues here. One is the complicated legal process attached to eventually charging Rudakubana with terrorist offences but not designating the attack itself an act of terrorism.

That will seem absurd to many people, but it is also a matter of law, rather than interpretation. Vikram Dodd has a useful explainer on the issues involved here. And we should reserve judgment on how the definition was applied here until after the sentencing hearing on Thursday.

The other is about contempt of court. As Starmer acknowledged yesterday, it is true that he and many others knew some of the details to emerge after Rudakubana’s guilty plea early on. But as any journalist covering the case would know, publishing information that risks collapsing a jury trial is a serious matter.

It is standard practice for anything that might prejudice a jury to be held back until a trial is over or there has been a guilty plea, and that’s what happened here. If Jenrick had been genuinely concerned that the legal process be respected, he would not have made his incendiary comments.

It is probably unrealistic to expect everyone who sees a headline about Southport and an alleged cover-up to have absorbed all of these details. But that only increases the responsibility on public figures to avoid misleading claims. That is all the more important in the context of the initial disinformation and riots, which fuelled a persistent narrative that the state was refusing to admit that multiculturalism was ultimately to blame.

What lessons can we draw from all this?

The fact that the cover-up claims are ill founded doesn’t mean that there aren’t many lessons to be drawn from the Southport case.

For the police, there could hardly be a more powerful example of the importance of effective public communication. The information vacuum between reports of the attack and the police saying that the suspect had been born in the UK only lasted a matter of hours, but as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, said in September, that gap “was filled with false speculation”.

For the government, there is the question of whether an attack like this should be viewed as terrorism. Keir Starmer said yesterday that the law will be changed to allow “extreme individualised violence” to be charged as terror offences, a response to the changing nature of terror threats of all ideological stripes that will feel long overdue to many.

Starmer also noted that “I don’t think anybody could ever have looked the victims and their families in the eye” if they had broken the contempt laws and risked collapsing the trial. And it is reasonable for politicians to be cautious in such cases.

But it is also true that contempt laws feel increasingly outdated, and that the definitions of what counts as contempt are so subjective that most media outlets will take a very conservative approach. With so much disinformation circulated online with scant regard for the law, it is surreal that outlets that might report more responsibly are the only ones staying out of the game. (I wrote about all this in the context of the Lucy Letby case last year.)

And there is an important distinction to draw: even if the law feels arcane, following it in the normal way is by no definition a cover-up. Anyone claiming otherwise has a share of responsibility for the climate of distrust that has become such a toxic accompaniment to this devastating case.

What else we’ve been reading

• This fascinating and beautiful Guardian documentary follows the seven remaining speakers of Haíɫzaqvḷa in British Columbia over the course of two years, highlighting the impact of the catastrophic destruction of Indigenous languages and offering a powerful glimpse into their fight to save their ancestral language. Nimo

• Serious female powerlifters are quite likely to experience urinary incontinence when they lift - but an abundance of shame and a shortage of research means that they may be derided or referred to a bed-wetting clinic. Rose George’s feature goes in all sorts of interesting directions, and has some clear advice: “Keep lifting.” Archie

• David Smith’s moving interview with Manuel Oliver, a father whose 17-year-old son was murdered in the Parkland school shooting that killed 16 other children, is a difficult but important read. The pair discuss Oliver’s one man play that “honours his child and addresses the scourge of gun violence in America”. Nimo

• Donald Trump’s inauguration was “an occasion devoid of a sense of occasion”, writes Marina Hyde: “I would honestly have preferred Trump to ride in on the QAnon shaman.” Archie

• Handwriting “offers a glimpse of individuality”, writes Christine Rosen – it tells us something about a person’s state of mind, their emotions and their personality. In this insightful and fascinating long read, Rosen explains what we are in danger of losing if we stop putting pen to paper. Nimo

Sport

Football | Arne Slot singled out “special” Mohamed Salah after he and Harvey Elliott scored as Liverpool maintained their 100% league phase record and saw off Lille 2-1. Roundup and results of the Champions League matches are here.

Tennis | Novak Djokovic surprised Carlos Alcaraz in the Australian Open quarter-finals on Tuesday, overcoming an injury in a stunning four-set comeback. On Wednesday, Iga Swiatekdismantled the eighth seed Emma Navarro 6-1, 6-2 to set up a semi-final against Madison Keys.

Football | Disabled football fans feel increasingly unwelcome at English grounds, according to a charity working for greater inclusion, which has warned that supporters’ concerns are being ignored. A third of respondents to an annual survey of disabled fans by Level Playing Field have said accessibility to stadiums is a barrier that prevents them from attending matches.

The front pages

“PM’s pledge to overhaul terror laws amid ‘tidal wave’ of online violence” is the top story in the Guardian today. The i says “Labour makes new threats to tackle tech moguls over harmful content” and the Express has “Britain’s ‘new threat’ from violent online ‘misfits’”, while in the Metro it’s “War on ‘misfits’”. The Times has “Southport killer got knife on Amazon” while the Mirror says “Total disgrace he was able to buy knife on Amazon”, and the Sun describes Axel Rudakubana as “The Amazon killer”.

The Telegraph splashes on “Benefit cheats to be banned from roads” while the Daily Mail goes with “Reeves hit by biggest jobs slump since Covid”. “Trump widens ‘economic war’ to tax” is the page one lead in the Financial Times.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

When Nigel Kendall moved from London to rural France, he brought his trusty secondhand bike with him to explore his beautiful new home. But the hilly terrain was exhausting and Kendall put away his bike, and his cycling dreams, in a shed. That was until e-bikes opened up a new world for him.

“I found secret paths to sacred springs, I came across prehistoric monoliths, clear streams, and river bathing sites where no one else was bathing,” Kendall writes. Ecycling helped him feel like he belonged to this ancient community, learn more about his new home and, perhaps most importantly, it made him feel better “about being here, about existing, about enjoying the moment”.

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

• Quick crossword

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