Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has been criticised after saying she wants police to “shoot your terrorists and ask questions second.”
Speaking to Matt Forde’s Political Party podcast, Rayner said she was “quite hardline” on law and order and suggested police should “antagonise” criminals.
“On things like law and order I am quite hardline. I am like, shoot your terrorists and ask questions second,” Rayner told the live audience at the podcast recording. After a loud audience reaction, she said. “Sorry – is that the most controversial thing I’ve ever said?”
“On law and order, I think if you are being terrorised by the local thug, I want a copper to come and sort them out,” she said. “You should be hardline on things like that. It’s not just, ‘Oh you’ve been burgled here is a crime number’.”
She added: “I want you to beat down the door of the criminals and sort them out and antagonise them. That’s what I say to my local police … three o’clock in the morning and antagonise them.”
Rayner said she had formed her views after being “plagued by antisocial behaviour” when she was growing up. “I want the police to annoy the hell out of them until they realise disrupting lives is not OK. I am quite hardline on that,” she said.
Rayner has also spoken out recently about receiving extensive online abuse and death threats.
Among those criticising Rayner was the former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who said: “Is Angela suggesting a mandatory death sentence for suspected (but not convicted) “terrorists” ?” she tweeted.
Rayner was also criticised by the leftwing grassroots group Momentum. Sonali Bhattacharyya, of Momentum’s national coordinating group, said: “These remarks are deeply concerning. It was this approach that led to the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes.
“You can’t kneel for racial justice one day, then praise shoot-to-kill powers for the police the next.
“From regressive drug policy to abandoning the rule of law, Labour are trying to out-Tory the Tories. But it’s working class communities and people of colour who pay the price for this law and order agenda. In the party and the streets, our movement will stand up for social justice.”
Corbyn himself had been vocally against “shoot to kill” policies. “I think that is quite dangerous and I think it can often be counterproductive. I think you have to have security which prevents people firing off weapons where you can and there are various degrees of doing things, as we know, but the idea you end up with a war on the streets is not a good thing,” he said in 2015.
