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Manchester attack may affect British election

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the country’s threat level would remain at its current level on Tuesday, as the government, security officials and politicians reacted to the previous evening’s attack in Manchester.

British Prime Minister Theresa May vows to maintain the country's security alert at "severe", its second-highest level, outside her office at 10 Downing Street in London, 23 May 2017.
British Prime Minister Theresa May vows to maintain the country's security alert at "severe", its second-highest level, outside her office at 10 Downing Street in London, 23 May 2017. Reuters/Toby Melville
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May said the UK would maintain its second highest level of “severe”, meaning a terrorist attack remains highly likely, and that counterterrorist intelligence would be assessing the situation in the days to come.

While unable to prevent the suicide bombing, which left at least 22 people dead and 58 injured after a concert of American pop singer Ariana Grande in the city of Manchester on Monday evening, Britain’s security forces were confronted with the widest-scale attack since the 7 July 2005 attacks on the London transport network.

“If you look at the risk, then it’s virtually impossible to prevent all attacks and the intelligence services have been pretty efficient over the past few years in the UK,” says Kit Nicholl, security analyst at IHS country risk, adding that the bombing surpasses the seemingly improvised lone-wolf attacks such as the one on Westminster Bridge two months ago.

“The attacker must have known he was able to access the foyer [of the concert hall] without undergoing any security checks,” Nicholl says. “In terms of the actual materials used, […] it does require a certain level of sophistication to put together an improvised explosive device at that point, especially seeing as to collect all of the materials without being detected by security services.”

Nicholls believes all this points to likely accomplices: “I’d be surprised if this perpetrator had managed to do that without the help of collaborators.”

Possible repercussions on election campaign

All major parties have suspended campaigning for the 8 June general election, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn saying he has agreed with the prime minister to keep it that way “until further notice”.

Still, with just over two weeks until election day, the attack could very well affect a campaign that has so far been dominated by Britain’s departure from the European Union.

“One of the aims of [the attack] is to create greater divisions in society, particularly greater Islamophobia, and I think broadly Britain is aware of this and will avoid it,” says Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford.

“The leading politicians will be pretty cautious about in any way bringing this into election campaigning, at least in the short term but we have well over two weeks to go before polling day.”

Manchester area politician Qassim Afzal, who lives not far from the site of the attack, says he has not got much thirst for politics at the moment anyways.

“We’re in a campaign situation at the moment and all that’s frozen,” he says. “No one really wants to campaign because they’re just devastated and heartbroken that in our beautiful city of Manchester, such a horrendous, evil attack has taken place.”

 

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