Yvette Cooper: Nigel Farage plays into the hands of extremists with his divisive response to terror attacks

“Unless Nigel Farage is talking about putting vetting and border controls around Kent,” it is unclear what he wants to achieve by talking about immigration in response to Wednesday’s terror attack, Yvette Cooper has said.

Cooper attacked the former UKIP leader for his “divisive” response which “plays into the hands of extremists”. “Terrorists and extremists want to divide us,” she added.

Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, praised the police and security services for their work, saying that there is going to be a “full review…that the police and security staff will want to lead.”

“We need to let them do that, and to let them establish all of the facts first, before we can be clear what lessons can be learnt,” she said on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. 

She said there is a “broader debate” to be had about police funding and capabilities, but that it is not “an immediate issue for today”.

“It wouldn’t have mattered how much policing you had had in parliament itself, obviously that attack on the bridge was the kind of thing that somebody could have done in a car, anywhere – not just in London – but anywhere in the country as well.”

“That’s why this has to also be looking at the wider causes, and the radicalisation as well as the immediate police response.”

On the attacks themselves, she said: “I think this was a vile attack, you had people mown down just for walking along a bridge… then the attempted attack on parliament itself, which failed because of the bravery of PC Keith Palmer who gave his life saving others.”