Panic in Conservative Central Office. At the start of the election campaign their best case scenario was a 200 seat majority, with worst case an 80 seat majority. Now the polls have narrowed and are holding despite Corbyn's evident weaknesses on security (fact is most people agree with him that our Middle Eastern interventions raise the risk of terrorism here, even if they aren't going to vote for him). May's personal popularity has dropped by more than 50% and her personal lead over Corbyn also halved. New best case scenario is an 80 seat majority - worst case a hung parliament. Which is what they will start scaremongering about sharpish.
Dissatisfaction with May amongst the Tory backbenchers growing rapidly. She called the election, made it all about herself and her amazing strength and stability, wrote the manifesto with her little gang then changed it a few hours later, decided the entire strategy herself. She will clearly take the blame from her own side if they don't romp home.
I think there's quite a bit of ignorance on here concerning how the security services work, especially about how surveillance is carried out.
How many of the 20,000 police cut are likely to have been highly trained armed officers of the type needed to add more security on the streets in the event of a heightened terrorist threat?
Strolls...........normal bobbies on the beat do not carry out any surveillance on these people, Indeed they wouldn't even know such operations were happening on their patch in many instances. (I've already agreed that cutting police numbers was a mistake however).
We have troops on the streets because there aren't enough highly trained armed police officers and this has been a problem from long before May was on the scene. The army took over guarding important buildings etc, thus releasing these armed cops to be more prevalent and there to try to protect the likes of you guys. Ask most normal people in the street and they are reassured and GRATEFUL for the increased security presence.
Perhaps a little less blaming of our Government and a bit more of the murderous scum killing our people would make a refreshing change. Corbyn & Co always blame their own Country and there's plenty of that on here too.
I'm pretty sick of it and as it seems I'm very much in the minority on here, I'll stop banging my head against this particular brick wall for a while before I say something I shouldn't and that I'll regret,
You are right Col I have no expertise, and very little interest, in the details of intelligence work. I know surveillance is incredibly demanding in terms of heads, think I read that you need 30 officers to track one suspect. This is why it's important to know whether they weren't tracking the Manchester bastard because they didn't think it was necessary or that they couldn't physically do it through lack of resource. No one (at least not me) is claiming that the police and intelligence services are not doing a fantastic job in stopping nearly all planned attacks. The debate is whether government policy has made their job harder. On the other hand it is obviously the government's job to make the tough decisions on how to prioritise spending our money, and we get to vote on whether they have done a good job or not.
The current offers on security for us to vote on are:
Tories: more intelligence and security officers, a Commission on Countering Extremism to advise the government on laws etc. No further detail and not included on manifesto, announced yesterday.
Labour: more intelligence and security officers, more prison and border control officers, 10,000 more police officers.
Of course election pledges aren't worth the paper they are written on, or the pixels they take up, but one of these looks a bit stronger than the other to me.
