Boss of UK Prevent anti-extremism unit quits over Taylor Swift dance class murders

Organisation failed to pick up killer's threat despite Axel Rudakubana being referred to it three times

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer places a floral tribute to the child victims of a knife attack in Southport, England. Getty Images

The head of Britain’s Prevent antiterrorism programme has resigned following the agency’s failings over the Southport stabbing spree last year.

Michael Stewart left his post after a report commissioned soon after Axel Rudakubana killed three girls and injured eight others at a Taylor Swift-inspired dance class found that Prevent had “prematurely” dismissed the threat posed by him on each of the three occasions he was referred by teachers to the programme between 2019 and 2021.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer highlighted systematic failures over the handling of Rudakubana’s Prevent referral for concerns about his obsession with violence but was never recommended for further intervention.

He made clear that the failure of state institutions “frankly leaps off the page”.

The Prevent team had further been criticised over allegations it had underplayed the threats posed by Islamic extremists.

Rudakubana, 18, who was born in Wales to Rwandan parents, was jailed for 52 years after admitting three murders, 10 attempted murders and possessing the poison ricin and a terrorist manual.

Axel Rudakubana killed three young girls in a stabbing spree last year that sparked the UK's most violent riots in a decade. AFP

His guilty pleas prompted the government to announce a public inquiry into the events leading up to the killings in the north-west town of Southport on July 29 last year.

Experts have also told The National that much of the government's approach to deradicalisation in its Prevent programme needs to rapidly change to deal with the rise of the new extremism.

The organisation was “underfunded and likely out of date”, and, along with the law, had to be “brought into the 21st century,” said Gareth Westwood, of the Sibylline intelligence company.

Furthermore, Jonathan Hall, the UK government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, stated that Prevent was too focused on people with extreme ideologies, rather than those “obsessed by violence”.

Two decades ago the threat was “Islamist terrorism coming from Al Qaeda” with preachers and a radicalising ideology that could be targeted usually with deradicalisation, he wrote in a report.

“But we’re living in a different world now, which is the internet world, where people don’t go to individuals, they’re not part of groups,” he said. “They just become obsessed by violence."

The Prevent system was not designed for those individuals so the public inquiry need to look at “how do you pick up these people”.

A Home Office source said the department did not comment on internal matters.