Now Corbyn backs police ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in hasty U-turn over terror
JEREMY Corbyn launched a desperate attempt to look tough on terror last night as he abandoned his opposition to shoot-to-kill policy.
In an extraordinary U-turn, the Labour leader said he now supported the right of armed police to open fire to protect the public from attack.
Mr Corbyn – who voted against new antiterror laws 56 times between 2001 and 2010 – said that as prime minister he would also ‘consider’ police requests for new powers to deal with the terror threat.
Labour’s hard-Left leader has come under fire during the election campaign for his past sympathy for terror groups like the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah.
But in a speech in Carlisle last night, he claimed he now supported the right of the police to use ‘whatever force is neces-- sary’. He also promised to reverse cuts to police numbers, saying: ‘You cannot protect the public on the cheap.’
The Labour leader said: ‘Our priority must be public safety and I will take whatever action is necessary and effective to protect the security of our people and our country – that includes full authority for the police to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life as they did last night.’
Security minister Ben Wallace described the intervention as ‘desperate’, adding: ‘This was a hastily-arranged speech designed to help Jeremy Corbyn run from his record on counter-terrorism policy, but it failed.’ Former Labour MP said Simon Danczuk’s opposition to shoot-to-kill showed Mr Corbyn was ‘effectively [the] terrorists’ friend’.
In the aftermath of the Paris terror attack in 2015, Mr Corbyn called the shooting of terrorists by the police ‘quite dangerous’ and ‘counterproductive’. In a BBC interview he said: ‘I am not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general.
‘I think you have to have security that prevents people firing off weapons where you can and there are various degrees of doing things, as we know. But the idea you end up with a war on the streets is not a good thing. Surely you have to work to try and prevent these things happening.’
Last week he refused to say whether he would order a drone strike against overseas jihadis plotting to attack the UK.