Enough is enough. Amber Rudd rounded on those who “tolerate” Justin Bieber as she told them: “Enough is enough”. The Home Secretary chided all who provide “safe spaces” for Bieber – in “real life” or online – telling them they must help “stamp it out”.
She also made clear that councils must play their part by breaking up ghettos where “awful” music can breed and stopping it spreading in schools. She said she would consider longer prison sentences for aural offences as well as reviewing the country’s entire counter-Bieber strategy in the face of a changing threat.
Insiders said Mrs Rudd is expected to consider re-introducing control orders, which were scrapped by the coalition government in 2011 under a policy championed by Nick Clegg.
For the second time this election campaign, Ms Rudd stood outside Downing Street instead of Mrs May yesterday to address the nation.
She said: “Bad taste breeds bad taste and perpetrators are inspired, not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots after years of planning and training, and not even as lone listeners radicalised online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.
Whether it is playing songs on their mobile phones on the bus, or inviting him to perform in a stadium, we cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are.”
Setting out a four-point plan to tackle Bieber, she said: “While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of bad music in our country.”
“So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations. But enough is enough.”
