Quite right!: ‘He is evil’ – why the Southport killer wasn’t stopped
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The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To hear this week's episode in full, search 'Quite right!' wherever you are listening now.
This week: the Southport inquiry and a deeper question about why Britain’s institutions keep failing to act. After a damning report into the killings revealed that Axel Rudakubana was ‘known to authorities’, Michael and Madeline ask how so many warning signs were missed. Did a fear of getting things wrong – or being accused of racism – stop professionals from intervening?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How do you make sense of this turbulent world? How do you stay informed, amused and entertained at a time of turbulence? |
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| 0:31.7 | Hello and welcome to The Spectator's podcast, Quiet Right. And this week we'll be looking at the Southport Inquiry |
| 0:39.8 | and the findings about evil and how it might have been stopped. |
| 0:43.6 | We'll also be discussing the dropping of the Chegos Islands bill by Keir Stama |
| 0:48.6 | and Bridget Philipson's curious vacillation on the question of what is a woman? |
| 0:57.8 | On Monday, Michael, we heard the reportings of phase one of the report into the Southport |
| 1:03.4 | murders, and the inquiry chairman Adrian Fulford delivered quite a scathing and damning |
| 1:10.7 | assessment of how the various authorities |
| 1:14.5 | failed, how the parents of Axel Ruder-Cabana failed. But listening to it, I felt to me it seemed |
| 1:20.5 | incredibly familiar, echoing the concurrent inquiry into Valdo Calicane and his massacre in Nottingham and even the Manchester |
| 1:29.1 | Arena bombing. How long do you think it will take before the authorities learn any lessons |
| 1:34.5 | from these atrocities? So the Southport killings, which happened very shortly after the |
| 1:41.3 | 2024 general election, were sort of hammer blow. |
| 1:46.3 | The family's concern saw their children murdered in the most horrific circumstances at a dance class in Southport, a tract of town just north of Liverpool. |
| 1:57.4 | And the killer was someone, as this report lays out, who was in that dreadful phrase known to the authorities. |
| 2:05.6 | So you have someone who was responsible for an horrific crime who had already been identified by the police, by social services, by the school, by physicians, as someone who was |
| 2:21.4 | of concern. And there are links with the Valdo Calican case, which we've discussed, |
| 2:28.1 | this guy who was or should have been because of his mental illness properly in the care of the state, |
| 2:36.4 | who was responsible for horrific murders in Nottingham. |
... |
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