.@Keir_Starmer, your statement says you have absolutely no tolerance for abhorrent scenes of violence like this on our streets.
With respect, tolerance is not the issue. Nobody tolerates a near beheading on a residential street in Belfast. The question your statement carefully avoids is prevention. And prevention requires honesty about a pattern your government has consistently refused to name.
A man in his thirties, a Somali national, pinned a man to the ground on a residential street and stabbed him repeatedly in the face and neck. Members of the public intervened with a hurling stick. A woman required hospital treatment for the stress of witnessing it. This happened in Northern Ireland, a place that has known more than its share of violence, and even there residents said they had never seen anything like it.
Your government has presided over record small boat crossings. It has failed to proscribe the IRGC despite repeated promises. It has blocked the grooming gang inquiry for a year before being forced to concede it. It has spent ยฃ10 billion on asylum accommodation contracts. It has actively resisted measures that would have reduced the number of unvetted individuals entering and remaining in this country.
The victims of these attacks are not statistics. They are British people, going about their lives on their own streets, who were failed before the attack happened. Failed at the border. Failed by a system that prioritises the rights of those who arrive illegally over the safety of those who were already here.
Your thoughts are with the victim. So are ours. The difference is that thoughts are not policy. Thoughts do not secure borders. Thoughts do not remove individuals with no right to be here. Thoughts do not protect the next victim, whose name we do not yet know, on a street we cannot yet identify, from an attack that has not yet happened.
How many more before the thoughts become action?
@RobertJenrick For anybody who has posted anything but sympathy for the families and friends of the RN personnel in response to this post, absolute shame on you. Leave your ranting for another place and time. Have some respect.