Many people found this very offensive, as it implied that France was to blame for the terrorist attacks. “[Clearly], police and the security services should only use lethal force with the utmost of caution and care but any right-thinking person would expect that if civilians were under threat in a terrorist situation whether in London, Cardiff or anywhere else, that they should be authorised to use whatever means necessary to remove that threat”.
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John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, whose terrified niece hid in a toilet bar for three hours next to one of the restaurants attacked in Paris, reportedly asked Mr Corbyn: “Are you telling Labour party members if somebody’s outside with a Kalashnikov, you are not going to shoot them?”
It should prove a welcome relief from events at Westminster for Jeremy Corbyn, who has faced open criticism from Labour MPs about his response to the terrorist attacks in Paris.
‘I’m not happy with the shoot to kill policy in general, I think that is quite risky and I think can often be counterproductive, I think that you have to have security that prevents people firing off weapons where you can, 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, that’s got to be the priority’.
The shadow cabinet he was consulting with over the weekend contains numerous advocates of military intervention in Syria, which are the forces Cameron is working with to win enough Labour MPs to get a vote to do so.
The Labour leader was due to make a speech that-whatever faults it would have undoubtedly contained-would have blamed terrorist outrages such as those carried out in Paris on the predatory foreign policy pursued by Britain and other imperialist powers that has turned the Middle East into a hell on earth and which is now threatening Europe itself with a similar descent into chaos and death.
The assault on Corbyn from his own side didn’t stop there.
One shadow minister described the Labour as a “f****** disgrace” in a conversation with journalists after the outburst. Cameron praised him for his “moral and intellectual clarity”.
Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk is said to have interrupted the Labour leader, saying “You haven’t answered a single question put to you”. Cameron said he agreed with Austin “100%”.
These attacks on Corbyn are nothing short of treachery, and they are just the start.
Corbyn came under repeated attack at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night over his stance on the legality of police action in the Paris attacks, the assassination of Mohamed Emwazi by a United States drone strike and his intentions to attend a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition.
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The Labour leader and Premier swapped statistics and Cameron’s claim there are more neighbourhood coppers is likely to challenged later today after the reduction in the thin blue line over recent years.
