Kemi Badenoch has claimed her personal experience tells her the Southport killer was driven to his heinous crimes by a lack of social integration.
Bizarrely, the Conservative leader also said she did not need any further evidence to back up her claim.
The MP’s comments come days after Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years behind bars for murdering three little girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven – in July last year, and injuring 10 others in a knife attack.
The shocking incident has sparked a wider conversation about how to prevent future such violence.
Last week, the Tory leader issued a statement saying: “It is absurd that we are debating online knife sales more than we are integration and how we safeguard our societies from ideologies and violence.”
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch stood by her controversial claim, saying: “There are a lot of people, like Rudakubana, who – despite being here from childhood – are not integrating into the rest of society. They hate their country.
“And they are being told that everything about the UK is terrible.”
Presenter Laura Kuenssberg then put it to Badenoch that when people use the phrase “integration” that’s normally to taken to mean people from different racial or different religious backgrounds.
She noted that Rudakubana was born in the UK, his mother is involved in the church, his father is an African Christian and there are photos of him joining in with his local drama club.
So Kuenssberg asked: “What’s your evidence in this case that his crimes were anything to do with a lack of integration?”
The MP replied: “That I believe is one of the elements. My evidence is my personal experience.
“I am saying this as someone from a similar African Christian background, born in this country, that the country we make to make people feel a part of the whole is very limited.”
She added that “it shouldn’t just be government, it should be the whole of society” working to improve this issue.
But Kuenssberg cut in and repeated her question, pointing out Rudakubana’s family were in the local community.
Badenoch replied: “This is part of the problem – I have seen what has come out of the court case, I have made an observation, I think this needs to be looked at.
“But every single time a politician wants to talk about these issues, there is often a pushback.”
She said people ask what the evidence is and then conversations turn to language.
“The minute you start going down that sort of track, we start to lose our way,” she said.
Badenoch added: “It’s very difficult to get this kind of evidence, we do need personal experience, we do need anecdotes, those are things that really help us shift the dial. We need a whole society approach and integration, I’m not scared to tell these hard truths.”
Kuenssberg asked her once more to be specific, to which the politician said it went far beyond integration within a community.
She pointed to the biological toxin ricin, which Rudakubana made, and how he possessed a terrorist document.
Badenoch added: “We don’t need to do so much research even for us to have a conversation about integration and that’s what I’m talking about.”
When Rudakubana was sentenced this week, the judge did not mention anything about social integration but said the killer had committed an act of terrorism.
Mr Justice Goose said: “In his home the police discovered clear evidence of a settled intention to carry out mass killing.
“On one of his computers were files proving that he had a longstanding preoccupation with violent killing and genocide.”