Yesterday’s appalling Islamist attack in Westminster was not just an attack on Parliament. It began on Westminster bridge, where foreign tourists and members of the public were indiscriminately targeted as they made their way over the Thames. But the attack ended at the Palace of Westminster itself, when the assailant was shot dead by police in New Palace Yard, after he had stabbed to death an unarmed police officer.
Parliament’s defences are designed to resist this kind of attack, even if there is a gate that is necessarily open at times for MPs’ cars. But as Theresa May told the House of Commons this morning, ‘the whole country will want to know… the measures that we are taking to strengthen our security, including here in Westminster’. Are there lessons to be learnt?
Quite possibly yes, if a significant but unconfirmed BBC story is true. Laura
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