Jeremy Corbyn: UK must stop ‘clinging to Trump’s coat tails’

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of using the language of Osama bin Laden after the Labour leader blamed Donald Trump for the deadly terror attack in London Bridge.

Mr Corbyn ignored pleas to avoid politicising the atrocity to tear into the US president who arrived at Stansted Airport in London this evening ahead of the Nato summit.

A Labour election attack video posted on Twitter this afternoon used an image of Friday’s bloody carnage, which left two innocent people dead.

It showed flowers beside a road sign in the capital, to a soundtrack of Mr Corbyn condemning Western wars and emotional music.

The tweet has the message: ‘It’s time for Britain to stop clinging on to Donald Trump’s coat-tails.’ 

It came despite complaints that both main parties have been exploiting the deadly attack.  

Mr Corbyn also penned a letter to the President asking for reassurances that his administration will not try to include selling higher-priced US drugs to the NHS on its trade wish list. 

Mr Corbyn said he wanted ‘assurances’ over the ‘prices paid to US drugs companies as a consequence of any such UK trade deal with the US’. 

Labour has warned throughout the election campaign that allowing US medical companies to supply drugs to the NHS would push up the price of medicines.

Mr Corbyn told journalists at a rally in Hastings that a Labour administration would walk away from talks if the US insisted on elements of the NHS being up for grabs.

‘We cannot allow our National Health Service to be put up for sale to American pharmaceutical companies,’ he said.

Writing to Mr Trump, he stated: ‘As you will know, the potential impact of any future UK-US trade agreement on our National Health Service and other vital public services is of profound concern to the British public.

‘A critical issue in this context is the cost of drugs to our NHS.

‘The cost of patented drugs in the US is approximately 2.5 times higher than in the UK, and the price of the top 20 medicines is 4.8 times higher than in the UK.

‘Any increase in the NHS drugs bill would be an unacceptable outcome of US-UK trade negotiations.

‘Yet you have given a number of clear and worrying indications that this is exactly what you hope to achieve.’

He told Mr Trump it would ‘go a long way to reassuring the British public’ if he rowed back from the NHS-related negotiation aims seen in the leaked civil service paper on the UK-US talks.

Mr Corbyn wrote: ‘A revision of the US negotiating objectives along these lines would go a long way to reassuring the British public that the US government will not be seeking total market access to the UK public services – that the NHS will not be on the table in US-UK trade negotiations, that a US-UK trade deal will not open up NHS services to irreversible privatisation, and that the US government accepts that our NHS is not for sale in any form.’

Mr Corbyn sent a letter with similar demands to the Prime Minister on Monday, the eve of the Nato summit.

Trump previously said it would be ‘so bad’ for Britain if Mr Corbyn was to become prime minister.

Mr Trump told Nigel Farage’s LBC radio programme in October: ‘Corbyn would be so bad for your country, he’d be so bad, he’d take you on such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places.’

Following Corbyn’s comments about Trump, Ex-Labour MP John Woodcock said: ‘By saying Britain only has itself to blame for the London Bridge terror attack, Jeremy Corbyn once again side with the enemies of the UK rather standing up for British citizens.

‘This sick anti-west propaganda ignores the fact that scores of countries that had nothing to do with the Iraq war are targeted by Islamists – it is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from Osama bin Laden not a man who wants the keys to Downing Street. 

‘Britain will be less safe if we let Corbyn Labour’s Jihadi apologists take over the country.’ 

Tories also reacted with fury to the online video posted to Mr Corbyn’s 2.2 million Twitter followers.

Morecambe and Lunesdale candidate David Morris said it was ‘appalling behaviour especially degrading to our closest allies.’

‘This is from a man who travels thousands of miles and places flowers on terrorists graves then… forgets he has done it,’ he added.

‘He is not fit to be even considered to visit Number 10, never mind be a potential occupant of it.’ 

Boris Johnson has defended launching a crackdown on the treatment of convicted terrorists after the rampage by 28-year-old Usman Khan, who was out of prison on licence.

Former University of Cambridge students Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, were fatally stabbed during a prisoner rehabilitation event on Friday. 

In a searing rebuke, Mr Merritt’s father David, an estates manager at a sixth form college and Labour activist, said last night: ‘Don’t use my son’s death, and his and his colleague’s photos – to promote your vile propaganda.

‘Jack stood against everything you stand for – hatred, division, ignorance.’ 

David Merritt, who describes himself on Twitter as a ‘pragmatic left-leaning atheist’, has been repeatedly retweeting messages urging politicians against swingeing reactions to the London Bridge attack. 

The family of Mr Merritt, from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, asked yesterday that his death not be used to justify introducing ‘even more draconian sentences’ on offenders in a heartfelt tribute. 

Khan was on licence and wearing an electronic monitoring tag when he launched the attack, which injured three others, after he was invited to the prisoner rehabilitation conference on Friday afternoon.

The event was organised held by Learning Together, a programme associated with Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology.

The attack has prompted the Ministry of Justice to review the licence conditions of every convicted terrorist released from prison, which Mr Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday said was ‘probably about 74’ people.

Mr Johnson has vowed to take steps to ensure people are not released early when they commit serious offences.

But speaking to reporters in Southampton this afternoon, the PM rejected the idea that his action was a knee-jerk response.

‘Look at my 2012 manifesto on crime … I’ve campaigned for a long time for longer sentences for serious and violent offenders,’ he said.

Mr Johnson said it was ‘probably clear from the outset’ that Khan was ‘too tough to crack’ when it came to rehabilitation.

‘What I’m saying is our job is to keep the public safe and that’s what we want to do,’ he added. 

Mr Corbyn also made a speech on the terrorism threat yesterday, saying Western aggression and austerity was responsible for fuelling the problems, and convicted terrorists should ‘not necessarily’ serve their full sentences. 

The election video posted on Twitter today includes footage of his speech, interspersed with images including that of the memorial at London Bridge.

The Labour leader slammed Britain for its ‘failed’ wars, and branded Mr Johnson the ‘world’s leading sycophant’ towards the US president.

He said cuts to public services ‘can lead to missed chances to intervene in the lives of people who go on to commit absolutely inexcusable acts’.  

Pressed during a campaign event at London’s Finsbury Park station this morning over whether released terror convicts should be reassessed and serve their full sentences, the Labour leader said it is ‘quite right to look at every case’.

He said: ‘I think terrorists should be sentenced, as they are, and they should be released as and when they have completed a significant proportion of their sentence and they’ve undergone rehabilitation and they are considered safe to the public as a whole. 

‘I do think that continuing with the process allows people to be released ahead of final complete of their sentence if they’ve been rehabilitated and they have been suitably assessed and they are very strictly monitored when they come out – I think that must be the correct way of doing things. 

‘There are enormous questions to be learned from this terrible event that happened last week and that is, what happened in the prison with this particular individual, what assessment was made of his psychological condition before he was released and also what supervision and monitoring he was under after coming out?’ 

In a statement yesterday, family of Mr Merritt, from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, asked for his death to not to be used to justify introducing ‘even more draconian sentences’ on offenders in a heartfelt tribute released yesterday.

They said: ‘He lit up our lives and the lives of his many friends and colleagues, and we will miss him terribly.

‘Jack lived his principles; he believed in redemption and rehabilitation, not revenge, and he always took the side of the underdog.

‘We know Jack would not want this terrible, isolated incident to be used as a pretext by the government for introducing even more draconian sentences on prisoners, or for detaining people in prison for longer than necessary.’ 

Miss Jones, a volunteer with Learning Together from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, was described as having a ‘great passion’ for providing support to victims of crime by her family.

In a statement, they said: ‘She was intent on living life to the full and had a wonderful thirst for knowledge, enabling her to be the best she could be.

‘Saskia had a great passion for providing invaluable support to victims of criminal injustice, which led her to the point of recently applying for the police graduate recruitment programme, wishing to specialise in victim support.’

Khan, who was living in Stafford, was given permission to travel into the heart of London by police and the probation service.

Convicted of terror offences in February 2012, he was released from prison on licence in December 2018, halfway through his 16-year prison sentence.

But the Tories and Labour have been clashing bitterly over who was responsible for the failure in the systems. 

Mr Johnson has argued that the Labour government failed to bolster laws after ‘indeterminate” sentences were ruled illegal by the courts.

But Mr Corbyn has pointed to cuts in rehabilitation services and said police numbers should rise.  

A Sentencing Bill included in the Queen’s Speech in October, which became defunct once the election was called, would have changed the automatic release point from halfway to two thirds for adult offenders serving sentences of four years or more for serious violence or sexual offences.

Judges can already impose extended sentences for offenders assessed as ‘dangerous’, where they will serve two thirds, but the proposed legislation would make the longer jail terms mandatory for certain offences. 

Police have made the first arrest in a new blitz on convicted terrorists who are free to walk our streets.

An Islamist jailed alongside London Bridge killer Usman Khan was dramatically held for allegedly plotting a fresh atrocity.

Nazam Hussain, 34, was detained just hours after Boris Johnson announced a top-level review into the licence conditions of 74 convicted terrorists who are now out of jail.

Hussain was originally jailed in 2012 as part of a terror cell which was plotting to attack the London Stock Exchange and other high-profile targets in the City of London.

His arrest means new offences were allegedly discovered within hours of the review being demanded – raising serious questions about how convicted terrorists are supervised after being freed from jail.

Specialist officers from the West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit arrested Hussain in Stoke-on-Trent yesterday. 

Sources confirmed he was being held ‘on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts’.

He is believed to have been freed from jail less than a year ago, at roughly the same time as Khan.