‘How Many More Children’? Prime Minister Heckled at Scene of Mass-Stabbing of Young Girls

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Oliver JJ Lane

Concern for public safety and raw emotion are running high after a mass stabbing of young children in the United Kingdom, with the Prime Minister being heckled by the public over knife crime as he laid a wreath for the dead.

Three children were killed and a dozen other children and adults were seriously injured in a mass stabbing attack at a youngster’s summer holiday dance party in Southport, Merseyside, England, on Monday. The Home Secretary visited Southport on Tuesday morning, and hours later she was followed by Britain’s new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who met first responders and laid a floral wreath near the scene of the attack.

During the Prime Minister’s brief visit to the police cordon at the end of the road where the attack took place, there were terse words from the public appealing for action on public safety. A video record preserving the event shows several people jeering the Prime Minister, with anger becoming clearest as, just moments after having arrived, the Prime Minister turned away and got back into his car to leave.

Among the views aired were people shouting “How many more children are going to die on our streets Prime Minister?… How many more children Prime Minister? Are you going to do something?”, another calling “Time for change Starmer”, and another shouting “How many more children? It’ll be mine next”.

Another questioned, “Are you going to stand up for our children?” while a woman in the crowd, sobbing loudly, screamed: “I’ve just found out my friend’s nine-year-old daughter was killed, the person I held as a child, and you can’t do shit.”

As the Prime Minister walked away, flanked by protection officers, and got into his car one voice shouted out a sardonic ‘goodbye’. They said: “Bye-bye, got your photo, off you go. Make a real change, Prime Minister, for our children!”

In all, the Prime Minister’s motorcade was at the scene for all of three minutes. The outburst is very rare in the United Kingdom, where the public response to mass-casualty attacks has generally BEEN very carefully stage-managed by the government over the past decade.

Responding to the scenes, Nigel Farage MP reflected: “I know the Prime Minister went to lay flowers and was heckled, and it shows how unhappy the public are with the state of law and order in our country”.

Although attention for the wider knife-crime problem in the United Kingdom has long focussed on London, it is not a problem limited to the capital, and the country has experienced a four per cent rise in “knife enabled crime” this past year alone. Critics have said pressure on stop and search to get knives off the streets for reasons of racial politics and weak legal action against known offenders is leading to an environment of greater permissiveness and declining public safety but little meaningful action appears to have taken place.

Meanwhile, a 17-year-old male remains in police custody for questioning. Little has been revealed about the suspect other than his age, that he was born in Wales, and that he comes from a family of Rwandan refugees. While the police keep the public in an information vacuum with next to zero detail whatsoever released about the suspect or what is known about the motives for the brutal attack on a class of young children, they have repeatedly told the public to stop speculating.

Downing Street has also taken up this baton, and has also castigated the public today for making their suspicions known. How effective this will be is yet to be seen, but previous experience shows the public does tend to make its own mind up about what is happening in the country, whether the government wants them to or not.

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