Another appalling cowardly act against the innocent, again we must pray for victims and their families but this is not enough, there must be a radical new approach to extremism and security in this country.
I understand that there is an election this week but would also urge parties and leaders to stop the political opportunism, this is not an issue to be used for electioneering when men, women and children have lost their lives. this is much bigger than party politics and will only be defeated by a UNITED Kingdom.
Neither Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn have a record to be proud of when it comes to Police, national security and terrorism so let’s focus on a robust response. We need to review all aspects of security and policing and for fear of sounding like Donald Trump boarder controls particularly for suspects returning from conflict regions.
Again, there has been a strong message of condemnation from the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslin community must be fully supported as they are key to any solution.
Currently there are around 500 operations watching more than 3000 suspects that are judged to “pose a threat”. Khuram Butt was on this list, so here’s the problem how do we deal with these suspects before a trigger is pulled? We cannot continue to wait until they act before we react.
Let’s start by ensuring both the Police and security services have the funds and resource and legislation they need to crackdown on all known extremists within our boarders.
Also on the longer term let’s make a start in replacing some of the 20,000 police officers we have lost during the past 7 years.