Sir Keir Starmer said the failure of state institutions in the case of the Southport killer “frankly leaps off the page”.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, yesterday pleaded guilty to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July.
Despite contact with state agencies such as Prevent, authorities failed to stop the attack which claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced an inquiry into the case, saying the country needed “independent answers” on Prevent and other agencies’ contact with the “extremely violent” Rudakubana and “how he came to be so dangerous”.
Speaking at a Downing Street press conference this morning, the Prime Minister said: “As part of the inquiry launched by the Home Secretary yesterday, I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure – failure which in this case, frankly, leaps off the page.”
The Prime Minister gives a press conference from Downing Street (Image: Getty Images)
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Sir Keir said the killings “must be a line in the sand for Britain”.
He said: “No words come anywhere close to expressing the brutality and horror in this case.
“Every parent in Britain will have had the same thought. It could have been anywhere, it could have been our children, but it was Southport. It was Bebe, six years old. Elsie, seven. Alice, nine.
“Back in August, I said there will be a time for questions, but that first, justice had to be done, and that, above all, we must not interfere with the work of the police, the prosecutors and the delivery of that justice.
“Well, yesterday, thankfully, a measure of justice was done, but it won’t bring those girls back to their families, and it won’t remove the trauma from the lives of those who were injured, their lives will never be the same.
“So before I turn to the questions that must now be answered for the families and the nation, I first want to recognise their unimaginable grief, because I know the whole country grieves for them.
“The tragedy of the Southport killings must be a line in the sand for Britain.”
The Prime Minister said the murders showed “terrorism has changed” with “acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms”,
He added that he will change the law if necessary to tackle the “new and dangerous” threat.