Tom Goodenough

Axel Rudakubana’s mother and father failed as parents – and they failed the three innocent girls who were murdered in the Southport attack. They could – and should – have prevented their son from going to the dance class where he killed those children. That is the verdict of the Southport Inquiry, which released its first report into the killings this week. Others have gone further: Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says Alphonse Rudakubana, Axel’s father, and his mother, Laetitia Muzayire, should be deported. Rudakubana’s mother and father must shoulder some of the blame for failing to intervene. Yet those who condemn Rudakubana’s parents ought to stop and ask themselves what would they have done with a son like Axel Rudakubana?

Dominic Cummings has warned Nigel Farage that Whitehall will break the law to prevent Reform winning power. Speaking on The Spectator's Quite Right! podcast, Cummings said: ‘They'll leak medical records, they'll leak tax records. They'll bug his phone and leak that. They'll do anything that they need to’. The former Vote Leave campaign boss and ex-chief aide to Boris Johnson said that Farage's political opponents were determined to learn from their mistakes in the Brexit referendum – and ensure that Reform doesn’t win the next election. He told Michael Gove and Madeline Grant: ‘The people around Starmer and all through the upper echelons of the Whitehall system are looking at Trump.

Sarah Vine’s How Not to Be a Political Wife is the talk of Westminster – and beyond. This week, four hundred Spectator subscribers and readers heard from Vine and Spectator editor Michael Gove at an exclusive event. Rachel Johnson – brother of Boris and son of Stanley – and Hugo Swire – whose wife Sasha wrote the bestselling Diary of an MP’s Wife – joined the panel at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre to discuss the losses and laughter involved in being married to politics. Politics is like childbirth, said Vine: ‘You think you're going to be fine? You're never fine.’ One of the difficulties, Vine told Spectator readers, is that politics catapults people who are ill-prepared for it into the public eye: ‘You can't pick your nose, you can't fart.

There’s blood spattered on the pavement but locals in New Addington, an estate in Croydon, southeast London, seem curiously unbothered. ‘I’ve had no problems,’ Eli, who lives around the corner from the latest stabbing, tells me.  Eli’s house is close to Rowdown Field, where last March a human head and other dismembered body parts were found. Sarah Mayhew, a 38-year-old mother of two, was murdered and her remains dumped here. Flowers and solar-powered candles are pinned to the side of a metal cargo container in the car park visited by her killer. Leftover police tape flutters in the wind. The roar of traffic from the main road shatters the silence. Diana, who lives nearby, is afraid. ‘It makes me feel worried,’ she says.

When Hatun Tash went missing before Christmas her friends and family had good reason to be worried. In recent years, Tash has moved house dozens of times and been repeatedly warned by police about threats to her safety. She has been stabbed and wrongly arrested. Tash has been harassed on the street and followed by strange men outside her home.  Tash, who is 41, has been targeted because she is a Christian preacher who used to be a Muslim. Last week, an Islamist terrorist who tried to buy a gun to kill her had his jail sentence increased. Edward Little, a 22-year-old Muslim extremist from Brighton, will now spend at least 24 years behind bars for planning a terrorist attack against Tash.

An asylum seeker has died on the Bibby Stockholm boat. The identity of the migrant who lost his life on board the barge in Dorset, which has been used to house those awaiting the outcome of their asylum application, has not been confirmed. A spokesman for the Home Office said: 'We are aware of reporting of an incident. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time'. Steve Smith, CEO of refugee charity Care4Calais, said: 'Our thoughts are with the person who has lost their life, their family and their friends.' News of the death came hours before a crunch Commons vote on the government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda. Rishi Sunak is attempting to persuade Tory MPs not to rebel against his emergency legislation to get the scheme off the ground.

Boris Johnson got plenty of things wrong as prime minister but he at least knew how to come up with a punchy slogan. ‘Get Brexit done’, was the tagline of his October 2019 Tory conference. It was a work of genius: both sides of the referendum, exhausted by infighting and frankly bored with Brexit, could get behind that sentiment. Its simplicity might have been deceptive but it summed up what people wanted: to move on. In a few more words, ‘invest in our NHS, schools and police’, it offered a winning idea. With hindsight, it’s no surprise that Boris won so decisively a few weeks later at the snap general election.