Maybe it’s just the time of year, maybe it’s the weather, but over the past few days I’ve been haunted by an unshakable sense of injustice at the state of the world.
The age of consent has just been lowered to nine in Iraq, effectively legalising child rape. And yet anyone who dares question such horrors risks being accused, wrongly, of Islamophobia.
Meanwhile, Hamas plays games with the October 7 hostages, withholding details of the 33 who are being released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are members of the terrorist group.
In Davos, Chancellor Rachel Reeves hints at a climbdown over non-doms as she now realises the effect on the Exchequer of Labour’s childish ‘eat the rich’ policies – but nary a mention of reinstating the winter fuel allowance for pensioners or undoing the damage to struggling small businesses, many of which don’t expect to survive 2025.
It transpires, too, that one in 12 Londoners are illegal immigrants, a fact that should focus the mind of the Home Secretary, but which so far seems to have passed her by, even as her office confirmed that more than 1,000 people have already crossed the Channel in small boats this year.
But by far the most soul-destroying story is that of a sadistic killer, Axel Rudakubana, who took the lives of three little girls – Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – and seriously injured eight other children and two adults in an attack that will go down as one of the worst in modern British history.
Despite being born here and growing up with every advantage afforded by the generosity of the British state, somehow Rudakubana turned out twisted beyond all human comprehension.
Even before he unleashed the carnage in Southport, he had displayed dark obsessions so disturbing he had been excluded from all mainstream education and referred three times to Prevent, the Government’s anti-terror taskforce.
Sadistic killer Axel Rudakubana has been jailed for a minimum term of 52 years, less time served on remand, at an estimated cost of almost £3 million to taxpayers

Rudakubana took the lives of three little girls – Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – and seriously injured eight other children and two adults in an attack that will go down as one of the worst in modern British history
His attitude was so frightening that professionals responsible for helping him felt the need to request a police escort at meetings with him.
When arrested, he gloated about the attacks, saying: ‘I’m so glad the children are dead.’
He has never shown a shred of remorse, refusing to face the families of his victims at sentencing, even trying to cast himself as the injured party. ‘You’re not giving me any support, judge. I feel ill,’ he shouted in court, before being removed. That, in particular, really enraged me – how dare he try to play the system like that?
In sentencing him, judge Mr Justice Goose said: ‘Had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child – all 26 of them.’
He added: ‘What he did has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime.’
Correct. Trouble is, because of his age at the time – 17 – that extreme level of crime cannot be matched by a similarly extreme level of punishment.
Thanks to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Rudakubana could not be given a whole life sentence. Instead, he was jailed for a minimum term of 52 years, less time served on remand, at an estimated cost of almost £3 million to taxpayers.
He is currently thought to be held under protection in Belmarsh Prison, where there are rumours of a bounty on his head.

A court sketch showing Rudakubana, 18, appearing at Liverpool Crown Court on the first day of his trial earlier this week

Rudakubana had displayed dark obsessions so disturbing he had been excluded from all mainstream education and referred three times to Prevent, the Government’s anti-terror taskforce
Rudakubana’s victims were also children. They, too, had rights. The right not to have their lives snuffed out by some crazed maniac. Why do his ‘rights’ trump theirs? What kind of perverse legal system allows something like that to happen?
This case captures so much of what is wrong with British society today. It’s not just the horrific details of the attack, or the questions that must be answered about the handling of the aftermath by the police and the Prime Minister, or the shocking catalogue of errors that led up to those terrible events or the brutal and – in some cases – wholly disproportionate response to public anguish at the atrocity.
It’s the fact that it makes us question the entire liberal belief system on which our society is based.
In particular, the notion that if we offer refuge and resources to arrivals from other, less peaceful or tolerant societies, they will always repay us in kind.
Time and again we have seen this not to be the case, from rape gangs in Rotherham to Rudakubana.
That is not to say we should withdraw the hand of friendship – there are plenty who are more than deserving. It’s merely to point out that a dose of realism is long overdue.
Some aspects of certain cultures cast very long shadows, and it is wrong to assume that those who get as far as our shores necessarily leave their trauma or beliefs behind.
Rudakubana had an obsession with the Rwandan genocide that his parents had escaped. Professionals visiting him at home said it was ‘all he wanted to talk about’. He clearly comes from a very damaged family, and that has to be acknowledged as a factor in what he grew up to become.
Related to this, and perhaps even more challenging, is the question of how our entire liberal belief system works when faced with crimes of this nature. Quite simply, it is not fit for purpose.
The UN convention on the Rights of the Child is a case in point: it protects the rights of someone such as Rudakubana but has no bearing on the suffering of the victims of Pakistani rape gangs, nor can it rescue nine-year-old Iraqi girls from being forced into congress with fully grown males.
Is it perhaps time to accept that the post-war liberal baby boomer Coca-Cola-teach-the-world-to-sing world view has failed, if not completely, then at least in these sorts of areas?
That in a world where ‘cultural sensitivity’ is used as an excuse to turn a blind eye to rape, where institutionalised misogyny is on the rise, where an MP can stand up in the Commons and speak in defence of cousins getting married, and where kindness is more often than not taken for weakness, a more robust approach is ultimately needed.
Is it time, perhaps, that as a society we stopped wringing our hands and – for the first time in a very long time – raised a tentative fist?
Central to our compassionate liberal outlook was the abolition of the death penalty in 1965. But in a world where a killer such as Rudakubana cannot be properly punished for his crimes, the question whether it should ever be reintroduced in extraordinary cases such as these inevitably raises its head.
I’m not sure I know the answer. I’ve never been a hang ’em high type; but on the other hand, in Rudakubana’s case, with him having shown not the slightest hint of remorse or desire for redemption, and with not a scintilla of doubt as to his guilt, I can see the logic.
It would provide fitting justice for his victims – and save the taxpayer the trouble of keeping him fed, watered and protected from other prisoners all too keen to do what the State won’t do.
Above all, why should the families of the victims contribute to that? The answer is they shouldn’t.
It might also act as a form of deterrent, provide a barrier to action for every other scumbag of Rudakubana’s ilk, such as the
murderer of Sarah Everard, the man who killed two students in Nottingham and beyond.
I now believe it’s time to ask that question: should we bring back the ultimate penalty for crimes of this nature? It would not be a decision to undertake lightly.
But if it could spare the life of even one innocent little girl, wouldn’t it be worth it?
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