Axel Rudakubana: Capital Punishment’s Greatest Salesman

I have written previously about the moral case for the reinstatement of capital punishment in Britain - that was in the harrowing case of Lucy Letby. While it was certainly questionable whether the evidence against Letby met the stringent threshold required for such a judgement, Axel Rudakubana obviates the needs for such doubts by A) gleefully celebrating the murders, B) showing no remorse and C) by pleading guilty.

In fact, I’d go further. Rudakubana is a textbook case, which deserves and undoubtedly will be taught in law schools in the future. If the Southport murderer does not merit the death penalty, then no one in history has ever done. The absolute evil unleashed on 29 July 2004, aided and abetted by the the negligence and complicity of the State, cannot be allowed to pass without a reappraisal of the law.

However hard it is to believe, this is no knee-jerk reaction on my part. I have always been in favour of capital punishment for the most heinous crimes, and have in fact (unusually) become less convinced about my position with age. The arguments against are very strong, and I do not dismiss them at all. Let’s take them in what I consider to be the order of ascending merit:

Thou shalt not kill

I’m afraid, as an atheist, the religious argument cuts little ice with me.

The State ought to conduct itself better than its worst citizens

In general, I believe this is correct. However, there is a point beyond which such lofty principles are arguably a hindrance rather than a benefit to society. Rudakubana’s crimes are so evidently lightyears away from such a point, that he exonerates us from our obligations to him. Perhaps tolerance, like diversity, is not a strength; perhaps it’s time to stop being so supine.

Is the death penalty genuinely a superior punishment to life imprisonment?

This is a good point, and undoubtedly a valid concern in many cases. I believe that a degree of latitude could be incorporated into the law in this regard, which I shall explain subsequently.

Do we really trust the State with death?

In a word, no. Incompetence and malfeasance are my main objections to the Assisted Dying Bill. However, as mentioned I believe such extreme crimes remove this concern - provided the highest possible threshold of proof is met.

There is another more crucial point here. While we fuss over the rights and lives of savages, we should remind ourselves that the State has already effectively declared certain lives expendable: namely, the countless innocent white girls it offers up as sacrifice to its’ multicultural experiment; not to mention those like Peter Lynch who die in prison, having had the gall to protest against the policy.

Human error

To my mind, this is by far the most persuasive argument against capital punishment - which is why the only circumstances where it would be permissible are those in which guilt in unequivocal. Rudakubana meets that threshold.

Let me give you my caveats for a possible reintroduction of the death penalty:

1. That it could only be used in extremis, for the absolute worst crimes.

2. That guilt would have to be certain.

3. That the jury would need to be unanimous.

4. That the judge would need to authorise it.

5. That the victims or victims’ families would need to request it.

This last point could serve in some way as a deterrent, with potential murderers never knowing whether their victims could condemn them from the grave.

While there is no stomach for the reinstatement of capital punishment at Westminster, the majority of Brits are still in favour - a divide which was poignantly expressed by Margaret Thatcher back in 1987, whose heartfelt explanation I cannot disagree with:

There is another despicable element at play here, the liberal desire to find excuses for extreme criminality rather than face the ugly truth of it. I was most disappointed to read Peter Hitchens’ latest column, where he argues that Rudakubana’s behaviour can be attributed to drugs:

“Rudakubana became crazy around the age of 12 or 13, between being filmed dressed as Dr Who, cheerful, and normal, and becoming the blank-eyed, dreadlocked, masked, mumbling grotesque which he now is. That is around the point that the children of Britain first encounter marijuana.”

While I am as opposed to drugs as Hitchens, this argument is beneath him. Half the country is drugged up to the eyeballs in one way or another on any given day, but only one subset of the population appears to have such an aberrant reaction. There is a reason why 90% of the extremists on MI5’s terror watchlist are jihadis, and if Mr Hitchens refuses to notice it, that’s on him.

Such desire for excuses manifested itself via the authorities, in the denial that Rudakubana’s actions were terror related. Really?! The knives, the ricin, the genocide fixation, the Prevent referrals and the Al Qaeda manual didn’t do it for you? Funny how a karate kick to Owen Jones is more than sufficient grounds for a ‘far-right’ ideological bent, but Jihad for idiots doesn’t quite cut it. If the Southport murderer had been Whitey, caught with Mein Kampf stashed under his bed, it would have been terrorism - no ifs, no buts. You know it, I know it, and Mr Hitchens, I suspect, knows it too.

The validity of capital punishment, for me at least, is not about punishment or even revenge, but morality. ‘Revenge’, surely, would be to place Rudakubana indefinitely at the hands of the Belmarsh ‘prison justice’ he is soon likely to experience. I beseech you, particularly those opposed to capital punishment, please think of Elsie, Bebe and Alice. Tell me why Rudakubana deserves to live, when he so cruelly denied them their lives? Tell me why he deserves to breathe the air he deprived their lungs of? Tell me why their families should pay in perpetuity for the upkeep of his miserable existence? Tell me why.

If the price of a civilised society is that we accept the random slaughter of our most treasured members, then that is a price I am not willing to meet. Sometimes, civility is not the appropriate response.

So do tell me, dear liberals, how ‘civilised’ you are. I hope however, you will have the grace to do so when it’s your daughters’ turn at the multicultural lottery.

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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