Terror Dominates U.K. Election After Short-Lived Campaign Truce
- Prime minister said there’s ‘too much tolerance of extremism’
- Tories are seeking to capitalize on Corbyn’s past comments
A police officer lays flowers at a police cordon at the north end of London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, to add to tributes piled their to the victims of the June 3 deadly terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS (Photo credit should read DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
Photographer: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty ImagesThe political truce that followed the second terror attack of the U.K. general election campaign lasted less than five hours, as the opposition Labour Party attacked Theresa May’s assertion that there was “far too much tolerance of extremism.”
The prime minister’s statement, made outside her Downing Street residence on Sunday morning, began as an update on the previous night’s London Bridge attack, which killed seven people and left 48 injured. But it moved on to set out a series of policy measures that May argued need to be taken in response. Her accusation that people “across society” are reluctant to confront terrorism went further still.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn used a speech on Sunday night to argue that her proposal for “difficult conversations” must start with tackling Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that “have funded and fueled extremist ideology.”