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Saturday’s stabbing attack on a train in Cambridgeshire sparked widespread panic on social media — particularly on the right of UK politics.
Ant Middleton, a former soldier and television personality turned rightwing activist, recommended that followers leave the country for their own safety. Others expressed concern about whether it was still safe to travel by train.
But the alarm came less than two weeks after the publication of crime statistics showing a decline in most forms of knife crime in England and Wales. Knife and sharp instrument offences recorded by police in the year to June 2025 were 5 per cent down on the previous year. The number of people killed in stabbings fell 18 per cent year on year to 196.
While the figures mark a continued fall from their peak in 2020, they are nearly double the most recent low point for recorded offences in the year to March 2014.
The question is whether the official statistics or the growing worry about falling victim to knife crime reflect more accurately the risk to a member of the public of being caught in an incident such as the train attack.
Police are holding a 32-year-old man from Peterborough over Saturday’s stabbing and British Transport Police, leading the investigation, have said there is “nothing to suggest” the attack was a terrorist incident.
Dal Babu, a former borough commander for London’s Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that incidents such as the attack in Cambridgeshire would create widespread public concern.
It was the second mass stabbing in less than a week. Safi Dawood, a 22-year-old originally from Afghanistan, is facing charges of murder and attempted murder over an attack on October 27 in Uxbridge that killed Wayne Broadhurst, a 49-year-old out walking his dog, and injured a 14-year-old boy and 45-year-old man.
However, Babu insisted there was a real decline in such attacks, which he attributed partly to legislation making it harder to buy certain types of knife online. Legislative changes have closed loopholes that allowed people to buy hunting knives that were later used in crime.
The perception of a rise came partly from social media, according to Babu.
“As soon as there’s an attack, people are invoking other incidents that have happened,” he said. “That amplifies the whole issue.”
Meanwhile, Simon Ruda, a former director of strategic insights for the Metropolitan Police now at the Arch 10 consultancy, said public fear of crime would be influenced by perceptions about who was being targeted. Few members of the public would feel endangered when drug dealers were killing other drug dealers — or feel safer when the level of those offences dropped.
“It’s worth considering whether or not the nature of knife crime is somebody chasing somebody into a dark alley and stabbing them in revenge for something or chasing after someone in broad daylight, stabbing them and running off,” Ruda said.
Ruda said a growing “brazenness” from some perpetrators could make a big difference to public perceptions about stabbings’ frequency or the danger.
The official statistics make it unclear whether random attacks like that on Saturday are growing more common, despite the general fall in offences. One of the most reliable statistics on knife crime — for admissions to NHS hospitals for assault with a sharp object — showed a 10 per cent year-on-year decrease in the year to June 2025 and a 27 per cent decline against the year to March 2020.
The statistics showed a 3 per cent year-on-year rise for the year to June 2025 in offences of carrying a knife or sharp instrument — but that may reflect a rise in police action to search people for weapons.
There is little doubt, however, that the battered state of the UK’s public services raises the risk that levels of knife crime could rise without continued concerted action.
The current long backlog of cases in courts in England and Wales meant anyone committing an offence knew that, if they were caught, it could still be years before they came to court, Ruda pointed out. Research on deterrents has shown punishment is most effective when it is severe and delivered quickly.
There are also continued risks that overstretched police and security forces could miss warning signs that some people might pose a risk of violence. The Prevent counter-radicalisation programme three times rejected the case of a teenager, Axel Rudakubana, because his interest in violence appeared to lack a link to a specific ideology. He went on to stab to death three young girls at a dance class in Southport last year.
Babu, meanwhile, said police forces continued to feel the effects of cuts to mental health and addiction services, which could lead to some forms of violence. It was important to keep working with organisations like schools to ensure young people were warned of the dangers of carrying knives, he added.
“We shouldn’t be complacent, even though the statistics are showing an improvement,” Babu said.
