PM: Threats to our democratic processes have crossed a line

ODN

In an exclusive interview, the Prime Minister tells Channel 5 News' Andy Bell that threats to our democratic processes have crossed a line. While discussing events over the last week, and when questioned about his view on whether Lee Anderson’s comments about Sadiq Khan were Islamophobic, Rishi Sunak said he agreed with people’s frustrations that the aggressive and intimidating behaviour of some is threatening the UK’s democracy. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00 One of the things Lee Anderson said today is that his words were born out of frustration

00:04 and in fact we're told that a number of Conservative MPs are reporting that a number of their constituents

00:08 are backing Lee Anderson. I mean do you think he's actually onto something in his comments about Sadiq Khan?

00:14 What people I know are frustrated about is seeing our democratic process threatened. We have a proud

00:22 tradition in our country of debating ideas and disagreeing but we do that peacefully and

00:26 respectfully. We don't aggressively intimidate people, we don't disrupt their private events,

00:30 we don't go and surround MPs homes and we don't threaten what's going on in Parliament to the

00:35 extent the processes there have to be changed. None of that is right, none of that is British

00:39 and I think everyone will feel as I do incredibly frustrated when they see those things happening.

00:44 And do you think that is what has happened in the last couple of weeks? You feel we have crossed

00:48 the kind of line whereby even Parliament is now being influenced by this sort of threat?

00:52 Well that's exactly what we did see last week and people should be able to freely disagree

00:57 and debate things and there's a line that people should not cross by behaving in an aggressive and

01:02 an intimidating manner. I don't think that's right and where that happens it should be met

01:07 with the full force of the law.

01:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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