Wednesday, June 7, 2017

After #LondonBridge Jihad, Security Debate Sharpens in British General Election (VIDEO)

I guess the polls are tightening, and it's possible Britain could have a hung parliament after tomorrow's election.

Whatever happens, Islamic jihad should be the top priority, but as always, expect nothing to change. Indeed, if Corbyn's able to win, expect things to get worse. Much worse.

But see the Telegraph U.K., "FINAL DAY OF CAMPAIGNING: General Election 2017 Tories on course for majority of 100 after latest forecast - the eight charts that show how Britain will vote."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "With British election looming, security debate sharpens as two bridge attackers publicly named":


Three days before a British general election in which security concerns have surged to the fore, Scotland Yard acknowledged Monday that the extremist Islamist views of one of three slain attackers who carried out a weekend terrorist strike had been known to investigators.

On the first weekday after the ramming-and-stabbing attack on and near London Bridge that killed seven people and injured dozens more, Londoners and visitors held a moment of silence amid a solemn vigil on the banks of the Thames — but they also resumed their workaday routines.

Commuters streamed on foot past police barricades and heaps of memorial bouquets. The bridge itself reopened, though some streets near the attack scene remained closed off.

Police for the first time publicly identified two of the three dead attackers — Pakistan-born Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, who had said he was of Moroccan and Libyan extraction. News outlets scrambled to learn more about them, redoubling questions about the plotting that preceded the attack, and whether it should have come to authorities’ attention.

With an increasingly hard-fought general election set Thursday, fallout from Saturday’s attack took on ever-growing political significance.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party was still favored to win the largest share of seats in Parliament, but a poll published Monday by the organization YouGov suggested her party would fall 21 seats short of a 326-seat majority, while the rival Labor Party stood to increase its share.

For the last month, May has attempted to cast as the election’s centerpiece the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union and her ability to provide stable leadership during fraught negotiations with the EU. Instead, she found herself forced to defend having presided over the cuts of thousands of police jobs during her six-year tenure as home secretary, the top security job.

Her chief rival, Jeremy Corbyn, said the prime minister should resign over the police cutbacks — a position he walked back somewhat by urging voters to let Thursday’s election be a referendum on that.

May, for her part, pointed to beefed-up security already in place, with more measures to come. “This was an attack on London and the United Kingdom, but it was also an attack on the free world,” she said Monday.

Max Abrahms, a political scientist at Northeastern University who has studied the impact of terrorist attacks on elections, said both Conservative and Labor leaders “are trying very hard to seem tough on terrorists,” adding: “There’s no question the attack in London will affect the election.”

Both candidates have also had to deal with another unexpected factor: President Trump. On Sunday and Monday, the president sharply criticized London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, with whom he previously feuded.

Corbyn denounced the presidential tweets; May defended Khan but refrained from directly criticizing Trump, who is highly unpopular in Britain...

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