Donald Trump has criticized the UK government for allowing Radical Islam to flourish in Britain which he says has caused crime to increase in the last year.
The US President sent a tweet on Friday in which he referred to figures released by the UK government showing an increase in crime by 13 per cent.
BYPASS THE CENSORS
Sign up to get unfiltered news delivered straight to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe any time. By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use
Dailymail.co.uk reports: Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: ‘Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.’ Not good, we must keep America safe!’
Figures released yesterday revealed that police forces registered 5.2 million crimes in the year to the end of June.
But while terrorism has surged, with five murderous attacks across Britain killing dozens and injuring hundreds in the last year, it is a tiny proportion of arrests.
The controversy comes after former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush slammed ‘bullying and prejudice’ and the lowering of political discourse in thinly-veiled attacks on Mr Trump.
Mr Bush took a dig at his ‘outright fabrication’ style of politics.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/921323063945453574
The bulk of crimes in Britain are frauds, thefts and public order offences which have no link to extremism.
Tory MP Crispin Blunt, former chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said: ‘I think it is a bizarre lack of self-awareness from a supporter of keeping Americans armed to the teeth with wholly predictable consequences.’
He urged caution in using the police data as a basis for analysis, and added: ‘However linking overall crime levels to Islamic extremism is utterly bonkers. Fake news, to coin a phrase. ‘
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the influential Home affairs Select Committee, said: ‘Hate crime in the UK has gone up by almost 30 per cent and rubbish like this tweet from Donald Trump is designed to provoke even more of it.
‘It is appalling that we have reached the point where inflammatory and ignorant statements from the President of the United States are now seen as normal.
‘If we are to properly tackle hate crime and every other crime, we have to challenge this kind of nonsense.’
Jo Swinson, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, accused Mr Trump of being ‘misleading and spreading fear’ while Labour MP Stephen Doughty said he is ‘talking nonsense’.
Mr Doughty, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, told the Mail Online: ‘Donald Trump is talking nonsense about issues he doesn’t understand.’
He added: ‘Yet again it is not helpful for the President of the United States to comment with ignorance on security and policing maters in the UK.
‘While we have had some very tragic and horrific terror attacks in the last year, this represents a very small proportion of overall UK crime.
‘Donald Trump would be better paced looking at issues in his own country such as the huge number of deaths from gun violence which despite repeated atrocities from sandy hook to Las Vegas, the US government have failed to take action on.’
Ms Swinson said: ‘Stop misleading and spreading fear.
‘Hate crime is up and it is fuelled by the kind of populist xenophobia you peddle.’
And Britons took to Twitter to slam the US president for his inaccurate portrayal of the crime figures – saying they ‘despaired’ of his intervention.
One posted a picture of a panda covering their head with their hands and wrote: ‘Where on earth did he get the idea that ‘radical Islamic terror’ is behind the rise? I despair.’
Another branded him a ‘fear monger’ while others questioned if the US president is ‘lying’ to stir up fear.
The controversy comes after his two predecessors in the White House both launched attacks on Mr Trump for lowering the tone of political discourse and fuelling hate.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Bush said ‘bigotry seems emboldened’ in today’s America.
He added: ‘Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.’
And in his first address since leaving the White House, Mr Obama said: ‘Some of the politics we see now, we thought we had put that to bed.
‘That’s folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st Century, not the 19th Century.’
Mr Trump has been embroiled in political rows with British politicians before as a result of his controversial tweets.
Earlier this year he repeatedly clashed with Sadiq Khan after he questioned the London Mayor’s response to the London Bridge terror attack.
Mr Trump branded Mr Khan’s response to the atrocity ‘pathetic’ and misquoted a reassurance the mayor gave to Londoners claiming he was playing down the threat.
Responding to the latest comments, Labour MP Chris Bryant said: ‘Butt out of it mister president.
‘You have more murders in New York or Chicago every year than we do in the whole country so we’re not going to take any lessons from you.
‘And you clearly don’t understand the difference between causation and correlation.’
Kevan Jones, Labour MP for North Durham, told the Mail Online: ‘This is another example of Donald Trump not letting the facts get in the way of his tweets.
‘He should look at the facts before he comments.’
Figures released yesterday revealed that police forces registered 5.2 million crimes in the year to the end of June – up 13 per cent on the previous year.
But while terrorism has surged over the past year, with five murderous attacks across Britain killing dozens and injuring hundreds, it is a tiny proportion of arrests.
Home Office data released last month showed the number of people detained over suspected terrorism increased to 379 – the highest since records began.
The bulk of crime relates to frauds, thefts and public order offences which have no link to extremism.
Figures released yesterday show the number of violent crimes rose from 1,033,719 cases the previous year to 1,229,260 cases this year.
There was an 19 per cent increase in the number of sexual offences recorded in England and Wales, up to 129,700 on the previous year.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data revealed the rise in violence was driven by increases in the violence without injury (21 per cent) and stalking and harassment (36 per cent) sub-categories.
The ONS report said: ‘Most of this volume increase was thought to result from improved recording practices but it is likely that rises in the most serious categories reflect genuine rises in violent crime.
‘These lower volume but serious offences are thought to be generally well-recorded by the police.’
Police also recorded an 11 per cent rise in the number of thefts, with the crime continuing to rise over last two years.
Forces logged 664 homicides in the 12 months from July 2016, which was a two per cent fall compared with the previous year.
However, the ONS said recent trends have been affected by recording of incidents where there were multiple victims, such as 96 cases of manslaughter from the Hillsborough disaster and the recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester.
If cases related to Hillsborough and the terror attacks are excluded, the homicide tally went up by 46, following a ‘general upward trend’ seen in recent years.
There was a ‘substantial increase’, of 59 per cent, in the number of attempted murder offences registered, which was largely due to terror-related cases.
Police-recorded offences are one of two official sources used to analyse trends in crime.
The other is the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which gave an estimated total of 10.8 million incidents of crime in the year to the end of June.
This figure includes experimental data on fraud and computer misuse offences, and annual comparisons will not be available until January.
John Flatley, crime specialist for the ONS, said the figures ‘suggest that the police are dealing with a growing volume of crime’.
He added: ‘While improvements made by police forces in recording crime are still a factor in the increase, we judge that there have been genuine increases in crime – particularly in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories.’
‘Police figures cannot provide a good measure of all crime in society, since we know that a large volume of it never comes to their attention.
‘The recent increases in recorded crime need to be seen in the context of the overall decline in crime indicated by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.’
‘The survey remains our best guide to long-term trends for crime as experienced by the population in general.’
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
Be the first to comment