AMBER RUDD VOTE CORBYN GET MORE TERRORISM
Home Secretary goes on warpath warning Labour win would risk fresh atrocities
BRITAIN can expect more terrorist atrocities if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has claimed.
He had ‘boasted’ about opposing anti-terrorist measures, there was ‘no evidence he will keep people safe’ and he would ‘sign our security away,’ she said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday.
Asked if she was suggesting it would mean a greater risk of another terrorist atrocity if Mr Corbyn became PM, Ms Rudd stressed she was not linking it to the Manchester bomb, but added: ‘It absolutely does, yes.’
Her comments are the latest part of a Tory attack on Mr Corbyn in the wake of the bombing – and follow a poll suggesting Labour has cut Theresa May’s lead.
Ms Rudd said that as Home Secretary, she spent two hours each day signing confidential warrants giving MI5 the power to track terror suspects. She said Mr Corbyn had ‘opposed counter-terrorism measures’ throughout his political career. ‘He talks now as though he could defend the country, but for 30 years he’s been against [anti-terrorism measures].
‘The whole [Labour] team, and in particular Mr Corbyn, have boasted about opposing them. I spend two hours every day signing security warrants. The only thing Corbyn would sign is our security away. He’d be a disaster.’
Ms Rudd said the prospect of Diane Abbott as Home Secretary was ‘ghastly’. She had a ‘history of not supporting police or security services’ and was ‘against the basic tenets of security’. Ms Rudd, 53, revealed she was reading in bed late on Monday when her private secretary phoned to tell her there had been ‘an event’ in Manchester. She knew instantly what it meant, and was up all night talking to police and MI5.
In her MoS interview at Tory HQ on Thursday, the Home Secretary spoke about the increased threat from jihadists.
She said: ‘A whole new terrorism industry is trying to recruit large numbers of British suicide bombers now IS are in retreat in Syria. They’ve changed their message from “Come and join the Caliphate” to “You can do your damage in your own country”.
‘I don’t want to alarm people but I do want to level with them: This is a difficult environment, people are going to want to do damage.’
She dismissed the more simplistic suggested responses to the threat.
Restore the death penalty? ‘These are suicide bombers,’ she said.
Mass internship of suspects? ‘It’s not enough just to say, “This is who the security services are following, maybe we should lock them all up.”’
Her remarks were reinforced yesterday by Mrs May who said she will appoint Britain’s first ‘AntiTerrorism Tsar’ if she wins on June 8. A new Commission for Countering Extremism will be tasked with cracking down on ‘unacceptable cultural norms’ such as female genital mutilation and uphold women’s rights in ethnic minority and religious communities.
Ms Rudd’s personal and professional CV could have been lifted from a Jeffrey Archer novel: a direct descendant of Charles II; her father a pro-Labour stockbroker; mother Marchioness Conyngham by remarriage. She was ‘aristocracy co-ordinator’ on Four Weddings And A Funeral. She entered Parliament in 2010 and became Home Secretary in just six years – a meteoric rise for the former Cheltenham Ladies’ College student.
Mr Corbyn is not the first victim of a Ms Rudd put-down. As an antiBrexit campaigner in the run-up to the EU referendum, she savaged pro-Brexit Boris Johnson over his womanising in a TV debate, saying: ‘You can’t trust him to take you home at the end of an evening.’
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions received similar short shrift from the Home Secretary when she called him last week to protest at the US leak of photos of bloodstained debris in the Manchester bombing. She revealed: ‘I was furious. I told him I objected in the gravest possible terms.’
Asked if she raised her voice she said: ‘Shouting is not my way.’ She added, with a self-mocking smile: ‘I can be quite severe.’
Questioned on Mrs May’s ‘dementia tax’ and subsequent panicky semi U-turn, she said: ‘It was a perfectly reasonable rec...,’ before correcting herself, ‘clarification’.
The word on her lips was ‘recovery’, wasn’t it? She gave a knowing smile.
Any of Maggie Thatcher’s Minis-
‘IS are trying to recruit British suicide bombers’
There’s no evidence he can keep people safe. I spend two hours a day signing security warrants. The only thing he would sign is our security away AMBER RUDD
ters who dared to say she had been forced to ‘recover’ from a blunder would have been sacked. There is no danger of Mrs May doing that to Ms Rudd, one of her most trusted allies.
Aside from her hectic Home Office workload, she was deeply upset by the death of her ex-husband, writer AA Gill, from cancer, last year.
The couple, who had two children, married and divorced in the 1990s when he fell for ex-model Nicola Formby, by whom he had two more children. Ms Rudd’s tone softened as she described staying in touch with Gill during his illness.
‘We had lunch a few times. He was lovely and it was a great tragedy for me, but mostly for his children, my two and the younger two. It was really hard for them to have lost him. A lovely man.’