Sarah Vine gets to the nub of the Southport inquiry

As one of the Daily Mail’s highest-paid columnists, with a remit to turn her forensic eye on the issues of the day, Sarah Vine can be relied on to get to the nub of the issue.

This week, she looked at the inquiry findings that the horrific Southport attack could have been prevented were it not for the failures of numerous agencies, with a retired high court judge saying “clearly, repeatedly and unambiguously signposted” warnings about Axel Rudakubana’s violence over many years went unheeded.

On X, Vine reposted a video from BBC Radio 4’s Today programme of Stephanie Roberts-Bibby, chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, saying that despite the best efforts of public services, opportunities were missed to stop the killer from carrying out his deadly attack.

“Lots of people talk about resources, and professional curiosity costs nothing; however, we should also accept that no-one in our public services goes to work to do a bad job,” said Roberts-Bibby.

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“Everyone goes to work to make a difference and to do the best they can. I think the chair reflected this very articulately yesterday, that people were doing what they could do with the information that was there.

“However, it is clear, isn’t it, that everyone could of and should’ve done more.”

And Vine’s takeaway from this? “Sorry to be a pedant, but it’s should ‘have’. Not should ‘of’,” she sniffed to her near 66,000 X followers.

In actual fact, Roberts-Bibby appears to have said “should’ve”, while the first is unclear (it is the BBC’s transcriber who declares it “could of and should of”). As the journalist and author of Accidence Will Happen: A Reformed Pedant’s Guide to English Language and Style, Oliver Kamm wrote in response: “The transcriber has misunderstood her pronunciation of the clitic “-’ve”. And all the angry replies laying into her have misunderstood this. She’s not making a grammatical error, as she doesn’t treat the clitic as a preposition. Everyone should calm down.”

Regardless – it’s that razor-sharp ability to focus on the big issues which earns the erstwhile Mrs Gove the big bucks!