LONDON — After the briefest of pauses in electioneering, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain found her record on security and terrorism under scrutiny on Monday, in the aftermath of a deadly attack in London over the weekend — the third serious terrorist episode in the country in three months.
Before
she replaced David Cameron as prime minister last year, Mrs. May was
responsible for security during a six-year tenure as home secretary, and
opposition politicians are highlighting reductions in the number of
police officers, including those who are armed, during her tenure.
“The
commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said that the Met is well
resourced, and they are; and that they have very powerful
counterterrorism capabilities, and they do,” Mrs. May said at a news
conference on Monday. “We have protected counterterrorism policing
budgets. We have also provided funding for an increase in the number of
armed police officers.”
The
prime minister also came to the defense of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of
London, who was mocked by President Trump over his response to the
attack. Asked about Mr. Trump’s post on Twitter,
Mrs. May said she was working closely with Mr. Khan and that he was
doing “a good job,” adding that it was “wrong to say anything else.”
With a general election set for Thursday, the main political parties suspended campaigning
on Sunday as a sign of respect for the seven people killed and the
scores wounded when three men drove a van into pedestrians on London
Bridge on Saturday night and then stabbed people in Borough Market
nearby.
The
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, declaring that it
had been carried out by “a detachment of Islamic State fighters.” It was
not clear, however, whether the assailants had been trained by the
militant group or if they were merely inspired by it.
As
campaigning resumed around the country on Monday, the police continued
to investigate associates of the assailants, whose identities are known
to the police but have not been made public as the inquiry is
continuing.
Twelve
people were arrested in Barking, in East London, on Sunday, although
one, a 55-year-old man, was released without charge. Early Monday, the
police entered two other addresses in East London, one in Newham and the
other in Barking, they said.
The
victims of the attack are believed to have come from several countries,
but only one has been identified publicly: The premier of British
Columbia, Christy Clark, confirmed the death of Christine Archibald.
Four police officers were among the wounded.
Although
there has been widespread praise for the professionalism and courage of
the armed officers who shot and killed the assailants within eight
minutes of being called Saturday night, the country’s broader
antiterrorism strategy was questioned.
Opposition politicians focused their fire on Mrs. May, who gave a short speech outside her office in Downing Street on Sunday arguing that “enough is enough,”
promising to shake up antiterrorism and deradicalization policies, and
calling for new efforts to curb the dissemination of extremist materials
on the internet.
Some
of Mrs. May’s political opponents regarded her comments on Sunday as
political and as a result in breach of the agreement to suspend
campaigning.
Late
Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the opposition Labour Party,
criticized the decrease in the number of police officers since 2010.
“You cannot protect the public on the cheap: The police and security
services must get the resources they need, not 20,000 police cuts,” he
said.
The
total number of police officers in England and Wales declined by more
than 19,500 between September 2010 and September 2016, according to
statistics from the Home Office. Authorized firearms officers — or armed
police — declined to 5,639 in March 2016 from 6,976 in March 2010.
The
government says, however, that the number of armed police is planned to
increase by more than 1,000 during the next two years, that additional
specialist teams are being set up outside London, and that there will be
41 additional armed response vehicles.
Mr.
Corbyn also accused the government of failing to publish a report on
foreign financing of extremist groups undertaken in early 2016, for fear
of upsetting foreign governments.
“Yes,
we do need to have some difficult conversations, starting with Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fueled extremist
ideology,” he said. “It is no good Theresa May suppressing a report into
the foreign funding of extremist groups.”
Asked
by a reporter on Monday whether he would support calls for Mrs. May’s
resignation over declining police numbers, Mr. Corbyn replied: “Indeed I
would.”
Mr.
Corbyn is also vulnerable on security issues, because of past support
for Irish Republicans and because of doubts he expressed two years ago
about a so-called shoot-to-kill policy for police officers during serious terrorist attacks.
Yvette
Cooper, a Labour lawmaker and former chairwoman of the Home Affairs
select committee, told the BBC that it was “inappropriate and wrong” to
draw “precise links” between police numbers and individual attacks. But
she said that fewer officers made it more difficult to gather
information and to counter threats.
In
a series of interviews with the news media, Karen Bradley, the culture
secretary, declined to answer when challenged about the decline in the
number of armed police officers in recent years. She focused instead on
the need to increase cooperation with internet service providers to
deprive extremists of a safe space online.
The
focus on terrorism would normally be expected to help the prospects of
Mrs. May’s party on Thursday, but her years overseeing antiterrorism
policy present a political problem, one that has been highlighted even
by former political allies.
“I
am so sick of Theresa May blaming others for terror when the system she
presided over has obviously failed so lamentably,” Steve Hilton, once a
close adviser to Mr. Cameron, wrote on Twitter. Mrs. May, he added in a separate post, “should be resigning, not seeking re-election.”
