London attack: May says ‘enough is enough’ after seven killed

Theresa May has warned that there has been “far too much tolerance of extremism” in the UK and promised to step up the fight against Islamist terrorism following the London Bridge attack, saying “enough is enough”.

The prime minister struck a sombre and serious tone as she spoke outside No 10 on Sunday morning after chairing a meeting of the Cobra committee following the attack in the centre of the capital in which seven people were killed.

She said internet companies must not allow extremism a place to exist, but that there was also a need to tackle “safe spaces in the real world”, which would require “difficult” conversations.

May also suggested the idea of increased prison terms for terrorism offences, even relatively minor ones.

Islamist militancy was the thread that linked the otherwise unconnected attacks in London Bridge, Westminster and Manchester, she said.

“It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth,” she said. “Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time. But it cannot be defeated through military intervention alone.”

She continued: “It is time to say enough is enough. Everybody needs to go about their lives as they normally would. Our society should continue to function in accordance with our values. But when it comes to taking on extremism and terrorism, things need to change.”

May said the recent spate of attacks showed the UK was “experiencing a new trend in the threat we face”.

She said: “As terrorism breeds terrorism and perpetrators are inspired to attack, not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots after years of planning and training, and not even as lone attackers radicalised online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.”

May said action was needed in the UK as well as overseas. She said: “While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.

“So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.

“But the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism, and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom.”

May’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who was formerly London’s mayor, also warned that attitudes must change, saying: “The wells of tolerance are running empty.”

In a statement, Johnson urged Londoners to “carry on with business as usual”, but said: “To those who sympathise or encourage or harbour or aid or abet these killers – in any way – we say enough is enough. Your time is up.”

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, said security services did not believe the attackers were part of a wider plot, which is why the independent Joint Terrorism Analysis centre (JTAC) had not advised raising the national alert level.

She told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “We don’t believe there are additional elements which could be carrying on the attack we saw last night – JTAC, rather, has made that assessment, so they haven’t recommended going to critical.”

May confirmed that the election would go ahead, saying: “Violence can never be allowed to disrupt the democratic process. So those campaigns will resume in full tomorrow and the general election will go ahead as planned on Thursday.

“As a country our response must be, as it has always been, when we have been confronted by violence, we must come together. We must pull together. And united, we will take on and defeat our enemies.”

She praised the “great courage and great speed” of the police and of other emergency services. “On behalf of the people of London and on behalf of the whole country, I want to thank and pay tribute to the professionalism and bravery of the police and the emergency services, and the courage of members of the public who defended themselves and others from the attackers,” she said.

Her comments follow the decision by the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats to suspend election campaigning after the attack. The Scottish National party and Greens are also doing this.

It is the second terrorism-related suspension of the campaign. It stopped for three days after last month’s suicide bomb attack in Manchester, which killed 22 people.

Ukip said it would not follow suit, with the party’s leader, Paul Nuttall, saying such an action would be “precisely what the extremists would want us to do”.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said his party would resume campaigning on Sunday evening, and to delay any longer would obstruct democracy.

He told Sky News: “We won’t be campaigning nationally during today, but we’ll be resuming later on. I think it’s important to give a message that democracy must prevail. If we allow these attacks to disrupt our democratic process then we will all lose.”

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “The election must go ahead as planned. It is right that we suspend our national campaigning for a short while out of respect for those affected by these tragic events, but local campaigning can and must continue.”

Rudd said it was presumed the three attackers, all of whom were shot dead by police, were “radical Islamist terrorists”, and authorities needed “to find out more about where this radicalisation came from”.

The home secretary said there did not seem to be any link to the Manchester attack on 22 May. But she said she could not comment on whether any of the attackers were previously known to authorities.

“The operation is ongoing so we are finding out more about who these three are,” she said.