JEREMY Corbyn has backed the police who shot a convicted terrorist dead on London Bridge during a knife rampage that killed two people.
Speaking to Sophy Ridge on Sky News yesterday morning, the Labour leader also said that convicted terrorists should “not necessarily” serve their full prison terms.
Corbyn, who has previously been critical of shoot-to-kill policies, said that the officers had “no other choice” but to kill convicted terrorist 28-year-old Usman Khan. Speaking on Ridge on Sunday, he said: “I think they [police] had no choice. They were stuck in an awful situation where there was a credible threat of a bomb belt around his body.
“It’s an awful situation for any police officer or any public servant to be put in.”
Corbyn added: “The point I made in the past, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland - this is going back quite a long way - was there was a concern in Northern Ireland that police were adopting a shoot to kill policy where it was possible to arrest them instead of shoot them.
“There should never be a first alternative to shoot people. But if there is no alternative then that’s what you do.”
Khan stabbed 25-year-old Jack Merritt and 23-year-old Saskia Jones to death in the knife rampage on Friday afternoon, which left three other people injured.
The killer was on licence and wearing an electronic monitoring tag when he attended a conference on prisoner rehabilitation hosted by Cambridge University scheme Learning Together at Fishmongers’ Hall near London Bridge.
The attack has prompted the Ministry of Justice to review the licence conditions of every convicted terrorist released from prison, which is understood to be around 70 people.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson tries to lay blame for terrorist attack with Labour
Khan was released last year on licence after serving eight years of a 16-year-prison sentence for terrorism offences.
Asked whether convicted terrorists should serve all the time handed down to them, Corbyn said: “Not necessarily.”
He added: “I think it depends on the circumstances and it depends on the sentence but crucially depends on what they’ve done in prison.
“I think there has to be an examination of how our prison services work and crucially what happens to them on release from prison.” As the polls show Labour is narrowing the Tories’s lead ahead of polling day on 12 December, Corbyn will today promise that rail fares in England will be slashed by a third from next month if Labour wins the General Election.
Corbyn intends to re-nationalise the railways when contracts expire if he wins the vote later this month and has announced plans to cut regulated rail fares by 33% from January 2020.
The party estimates the policy would save the average commuter more than £1,000 a year, and says it would represent the biggest ever reduction in rail fares. It comes after train companies confirmed over the weekend they will hike prices by an average of 2.7% in the UK next year. Operator Scotrail will raise fares by an average of 2.4%.
Meanwhile it emerged Dominic Raab has a fight on his hands to save his seat after a poll puts him at risk of being kicked out of Parliament by tactical voting. The Foreign Secretary has a huge majority in Esher but may lose it providing this election’s “Portillo moment” - the moment in the 1997 General Election when former Tory Cabinet minister Michael Portillo lost his safe seat with the result seen as a pivotal indication the Conservatives would be voted out of office after 18 years.
A DeltaPoll survey puts Raab on 46% with the LibDem’s Monica Harding on 41% - a lead of just 5%. The gap in the seat at the 2017 election was almost 40%. But the poll this time around has the Labour challenger Peter Ashurst on 9%, meaning that if his supporters were to switch support to the Lib Dems, Raab could be defeated. Peter Kellner, an ex-president of YouGov, said: “It’s possible, then, Esher will provide the ‘Portillo moment’ on election night – the defeat of a high-profile cabinet minister on a huge swing.”
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