{"id":79621,"date":"2017-06-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/blog-post\/how-devastation-changed-the-face-of-the-uk-general-election\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:20:32","slug":"how-devastation-changed-the-face-of-the-uk-general-election","status":"publish","type":"blog-post","link":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/blog-post\/how-devastation-changed-the-face-of-the-uk-general-election\/","title":{"rendered":"How devastation changed the face of the UK General Election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\nAn election to decide the path of Brexit has now been dominated by two awful terrorist attacks which have changed the nature of the debate and have, arguably, changed what the UK is voting on.<\/strong>\n\n<\/div>\n\n
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\n\nA vote on the EU<\/b>\n\nPrime Minister Theresa May called a general election on the 18th April, in the hope of gaining approval from the British public for her Brexit negotiations and hinder the attempts of other parties to disrupt these negotiations.\n\nAt the beginning of the campaign this was the case. While the UK remained in shock after Westminster attacks on the 22nd April this did not appear to have had a significant impact on campaigning. The coverage was very much on Brexit and social issues, which were at the top of party manifestos and mainstream\u00a0media commentary<\/a>\u00a0– with counter-terrorism policy falling to the bottom of both.\n\nTerror incidents…<\/b>\n\nThis changed on the 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0May when Salman Abedi exploded an improvised explosive device at the exit of the Manchester arena at an Ariana Grande concert. This was the worst terrorist attack on British soil since July 2005 (when three terrorist targeted the London transport system) and killed 23 people, many of which were children.\n\nThen, on the 3rd of June, at least 7 people were killed and 48 injured when three men drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before indiscriminately killing civilians in and around Borough Market. As the second attack in just two weeks, the UK has been left in shock and mourning. Understandably, coverage of the awful attacks dominated the news. All the major parties initially suspended campaigning on both occasions and then returned with a focus on how to stop these heinous crimes from happening again.\n\n…taking over the campaign<\/b>\n\nMay\u2019s response has focused on increasing security and being tougher on terrorism. After Manchester,\u00a0she pledged<\/a>\u00a0to create a new Commission for Countering Extremism which \u201cwould be made a statutory body with a legal responsibility to identify extremism and support people and organisations in resisting it\u201d.\n\nThen in the face of the London Bridge attack,\u00a0she said<\/a>\u00a0\u201cenough is enough\u201d and signalled a change in stance away from, what she described as, \u201cfar too much tolerance of extremism in our country\u201d. She spoke of a need to: tackle the \u201cevil ideology of Islamist extremism\u201d; remove this ideology\u2019s \u201csafe space\u201d, both online and in Iraq and Syria; and reassess of our counterterrorism strategy, potentially providing more powers to security services and longer \u201ccustodial sentences for terrorist-related offences – even apparently less serious offences\u201d.\n\nConversely, Corbyn has focused on the roots of radicalisation, and the potential impact of UK foreign policy. He made a powerful, albeit devise,\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0in which he condemned the attacks and argued that it was time to \u201cbe brave enough to admit the war on terror is simply not working\u201d. He said: \u201cWe need a smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism\u201d.\n\nIn response to the London Bridge attacks his comments also focused on current UK security policy. While echoing his previous calls to find an \u201ceffective\u201d way to ensure national safety, he also drew on May\u2019s potential faults by highlighting her police cuts in the face of warnings by the warned by the Police Federation \u2013 arguing: “You cannot protect the public on the cheap\u201d.\n\nCounter-terrorism is now top of the political debate and is now central to election coverage. In this, as May\u00a0notes<\/a>, \u201cthe choice that people face at the General Election has just become starker\u201d; it is now between May\u2019s tough on terrorism, strong security stance and Corbyn\u2019s focus on tackling the root causes of radicalisation and creating sustainable security. As the country mourns it must also decide who it trusts to protect it in these scary and uncertain times.\n\nThis blog post is part of a blog series about the UK General Election by the emerging think tank Agora in London. Agora will be launched in autumn 2017 as part of the foraus-global network of open think tanks.<\/i>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68606,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"archive-status":[],"region":[],"custom-themes":[],"class_list":["post-79621","blog-post","type-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post\/79621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog-post"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"archive-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive-status?post=79621"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=79621"},{"taxonomy":"custom-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-themes?post=79621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}