Following the London Bridge terror attack, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has backed a call for Theresa May to resign over her record police cuts.
Speaking in Carlisle over the weekend, Corbyn drew to attention May’s record-breaking cuts of 20,000 police officers between 2010 and 2016.
In a question and answer session on Monday, the Tory leader repeatedly refused to say she was in the wrong to cut police numbers while her time in the Home Office.
Corbyn has accused May of attempting to “protect the public on the cheap” by cutting police officers numbers, despite a Police Federation warning over public safety.
When asked on ITV news if the current Prime Minister was “in any way” responsible for the attack on London Bridge, the Labour leader said: “The primary responsibility for this lies with those who did it, they killed people in cold blood in a disgusting and appalling way and there are no words other than total condemnation.
“On the issues of policing – the Government has been warned repeatedly about police cuts, and the Police Federation and many others [have said] how 20,000 have gone down over the past seven years.
“We’ve said we’d put 10,000 back immediately and also increase the number of security officers that are available because clearly intelligence is a very important part of this.
“It’s also very important to have a message of bringing communities together and that is something I always give very strongly at all of my events.” he added.
When asked if he planned to back calls for Mrs May’s resignation, Corbyn said: “Indeed I would, because there’s been calls made by a lot of very responsible people on this who are very worried that she was at the Home Office for all this time, presided over these cuts in police numbers and is now saying that we have a problem – yes, we do have a problem, we should never have cut the police numbers.”
In response, May said: “The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said that the Met is well-resourced, and they are, and that they have very powerful counter-terrorism capabilities, and they do, we have protected counter-terrorism policing budgets.
“We have also provided funding for an increase in the number of armed police officers since 2015. We have protected our all police budgets.”