The Difficult Conversation has to start.

Goooner

The guy was know to the security services - but until he does something illegal if you increase Police numbers by 100,000 it still wont stop what happened the other night.

It all comes back to what measures you are willing to accept being imposed on people who havent done anything illegal, spouting a load of crap about Jihad might be offensive but it isnt actually illegal at this time. I can just imagine the response if the Government started arresting and interning people based on what they might do at some point in the future.

Pacifico

If you look at Facebook, that's exactly what many thousands of people want them to do. Not just the people in question either, but they'd be quite happy to lock up or deport their whole families too.

Sonic67

I would rephrase that - we need all of our Police to armed. What would have been the result if this attack had happened in some regional town like Bristol or Brighton where they dont have the amount of armed police that they do in Central London. In those places the best you are going to get is a couple of squad cars turning up with unarmed Bobbies in around 10 minutes and an armed response team in about 30 minutes. The first Police on the scene need the tools to stop attacks like this and that means they have to be armed.

Sonic67

I have no idea if that's correct. For all I know they also have some who are armed and can react quickly. We keep hearing about "what if this happens in some backwater?" What if it never does as this is about making the news and the news is about hitting a major city.

Sonic67

Corbyn, McDonnell & Abbott Voted to Allow ISIS Fighters to Return to Britain - Guido Fawkes

Tied into this?

Jeremy Corbyn said Isil supporters should not be prosecuted for 'expressing a political point of view'

Corbyn Defended Fighters Returning From Syria - Guido Fawkes

“I feel that we should think about this rather more carefully and avoid the knee-jerk reaction of saying, “These are bad fighters and those are good fighters, so we will ban these and allow those in… I have encountered young people who have been attracted to what ISIS is doing. They say that what the West did in Iraq and Afghanistan was appalling, and was questionably legal in the case of Afghanistan and definitely illegal in the case of Iraq. We are living with the consequences of the war on terror of 2001, and if we continue to try to create legal obstacles and make value judgments about people without considering the overall policy we are following, we will return to legislation such as this again and again, year after year.”

“I have no support for ISIS whatsoever, and obviously [measures] should apply to someone who has committed crimes, but we should bear in mind that expressing a political point of view is not in itself an offence. The commission of a criminal act is clearly a different matter, but expressing a point of view, even an unpalatable one, is sometimes quite important in a democracy. We should be slightly cautious about announcing that we will start to deal with people on the basis of a general view that they have expressed. We should think seriously about where our foreign policy has brought us, and what our legislative position now is.”

What is his view now? I know some will blame the right wing press etc, but I'd love to see him clarify where he is on this stuff now.

SteakAndCake

London terrorist 'carrying identity card from Ireland when shot dead'

Well if it turns out one of the terrorists was actually Catholic, we will never hear the end of it.

Sonic67

Does that need clarity?  Seems cut and dried to me.  You go after people who commit crime, you don't make political dissent a crime.

tapzilla2k

He could have voted to ban all who voluntarily joined Daesh from returning to the UK. Joining Daesh isn't "expressing a political view." Saying we shouldn't be in Iraq is "expressing a political view." They are a banned terrorist organisation who have killed British aid workers.

SteakAndCake

You should look at May's voting record on anti terror legislation. She's either abstained or voted against a lot of anti terror laws or voted at 3rd readings (similar record to Corbyn in many respects, though I don't believe he abstained from voting). She scraped Control Orders shortly after becoming Home Sectary  (I thought while control orders were not perfect, they were a reasonable response from the Blair Government of '05) with a watered down version that protected our civil liberties apparently. As for the shoot to kill policy the BBC Trust has said that the report was misleading. You are merely spouting Tory Party Election smears and not concentrating on what we need to do to tackle the Terrorist problem. As much as it pains me to say this, I don't believe we have any politicians of any particular party that is capable of tackling Terrorism properly. If we want to be better protected then we are going to have to demand it.

Sonic67

What is "it"?