Tackling terrorism should not be a party political matter – leaders should remember that

The challenge is much greater, for it is one that reaches into the entire fabric of our society. There should be no knee-jerk, simplistic moralising

The country is rightly angry about circumstances in the run-up to the tragic terrorist attack on London Bridge on Friday. That said, it needs to learn the right lessons, not dally with responses that are likely at best to be ineffective and at worse counterproductive.

In the middle of an election campaign there is the inevitable temptation for politicians to say whatever they think will burnish their reputation. Over the weekend, in the wake of the attack, Boris Johnson vowed to end early release for terrorists. What could be more obvious? If Usman Khan, the attacker, had not been released early, he would not have carried out his murderous attack. But of course, in the real world, things are not so simple.

The response of Jeremy Corbyn has been more measured. He said that convicted terrorists should “not necessarily” serve their full sentences. “It depends on the circumstances, it depends on the sentence, but crucially it depends on what they’ve done in the prison,” he said.

This must be right. This newspaper argued in its editorial here that “what is needed is not tougher sentencing but more intelligent sentencing, which is better able to judge whether or not an individual is a threat to society”. There must be a path back into society, whatever the crimes that have been committed, for all but a small minority.

We argued that the next government should do two things: it should have an urgent review of cases such as this, where convicted terrorists are let out of prison under automatic rules. And it should bring in a rigorous system of rehabilitation and judicial review, which would keep the option of indefinite sentences where they are justified.

More broadly, our country should look at the root causes that lead people into terrorism. Elaborating on the attack, Mr Corbyn cited Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 as setting off “a spiral of conflict” that fuelled terrorism. That is not helpful.

This paper consistently opposed British involvement in the Iraq War, and it may be that our involvement has had some effect in pushing some young people towards terrorist activities. But it is both simplistic and misleading to load the blame on to that decision of that Labour government. There have been serious terrorist attacks in France and Germany, both of which did not join the American-led invasion of Iraq, and both of which strongly opposed US policy at the time.

The Labour leader is on stronger ground when he cites the squeeze on public services as damaging our response to terrorism. The rigorous system of rehabilitation and the judicial review noted above will need resources. It would be naive to pretend that the squeeze on the spending of law and order has not damaged both policing and the courts. But the costs of putting more money into this are small when set against the cost to society from events such as those that sadly occurred last Friday on London Bridge.

There is a further point here. It is incumbent on all politicians to acknowledge that tackling terrorism should not be a party political matter. The challenge is above politics, for it is one that reaches into the entire fabric of our society. So there should be no knee-jerk, simplistic moralising – just the hard slog of nudging our society to be more effective and more responsive when tackling this challenge, and the many others that will face us in the years ahead.