THE leader of the House of Commons has described the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania as a “horrific, appalling attack”.
Lucy Powell also described the Government’s legislative programme, set to be unveiled in the King’s Speech, as “incredibly ambitious”.
She told GB News: “This is a horrific, appalling attack that we’ve seen overnight, which we condemn wholly and fully, and thankfully President Trump has survived this attempt on his life because the consequences otherwise are really unthinkable.
“We condemn any kind of political violence that like this and our thoughts are with President Trump, and in fact that all the American people who will be reeling from this morning.
“We have seen the murder of two of my colleagues in recent years and both of which incredibly sad and led to a bigger and deeper conversation that we needed to have and will need to continue to have as a country about how we uphold our democracy and our democratic rights and our democratic institutions, free from fear and intimidation, harassment, or indeed, violence or, or murder.
“This is an issue that faces us all at the moment. We’ve just had an election where we have seen some incidents of intimidation and harassment.
“Thankfully, no more serious incidents than that, but this is an issue which has been part of the conversation in Parliament…this new government, as well as the Speaker, have taken these issues incredibly seriously.
“More security and attention has been given to MPs and candidates alike, but these are broader questions about how we uphold our democracy…we’ve also seen the best of our democracy over recent weeks as well.
“People took to the ballot box right around the country to vote for change and boy did they deliver that change.
“We’ve now got a mandate to deliver for the British people and that’s what we’re setting out to do. The Prime Minister has made it very clear that he wants to take a different tone to our political debate, he wants to govern for the whole country, no matter who people voted for.
“He wants to restore trust in politics and trust in Parliament and…we’ve already hit the ground running and got to work quickly in delivering that change that people voted for.
“This week, we’ll be setting out our legislative program, which will help to deliver on those promises that we gave people at the election.”
She added: “What I can tell you is that it’s an incredibly ambitious, big, packed, bold and fully costed program, which we’ve been working really hard on for many months now and the Civil Service team and others have really helped accelerate that over the last week that we’ve been in government.
“By any standards, by any measure, comparable to other incoming governments, this is a really ambitious program and we’ll be delivering on those things that we said in the election that we would be doing, bringing more growth into the economy, tackling the housing crisis, ensuring we’ve got a clean energy and cheaper bills for people, better transport, getting growth in every part of the country, tackling those waiting lists in the NHS and recruiting more teachers.
“These are the things that we said we will be doing and we’re going to be doing those every day.”
