22 May 2025, 18:18

By Matt Vickers

Twelve years on from Lee Rigby’s brutal murder, we remember a young man who served his country with courage, a family left with heartbreak, and a moment that shook the nation to its core.

Lee survived the frontlines of Afghanistan, only to be killed in broad daylight on a London street by Islamist extremists, radicalised right here in Britain. That should never happen anywhere, and certainly not here in our great country.

In their act of violence, Lee’s attackers chose to attack a symbol of our country, an attack on what he represented. Our country, our values, our way of life. That fact should haunt us.

In the days after his death, David Cameron warned of a “conveyor belt to radicalisation” and pledged to root it out. The Conservative government established a task force to tackle this issue. Cameron was right to act then, and we must keep acting now. But the uncomfortable truth is that today, Prevent, which should be our frontline defence against extremism, is falling short.

The 2023 independent Shawcross review looked into addressing this very issue. What it found was that Prevent had gone soft on Islamist extremism, and the........

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