Boris Johnson saw an opportunity to score political points in the aftermath of the London Bridge terror attack when most people saw a tragedy, the father of one of the victims has said. Dave Merritt's 25-year-old son Jack died alongside Saskia Jones, 23, in the attack by Usman Khan during a prisoner rehabilitation event at Fishmongers' Hall in central London last month.
Mr Merritt said there had been no attempts made to contact the family from either the Prime Minister or Downing Street. He said the family had turned down a meeting with the Home Secretary.
Following the attack, Mr Johnson spoke of his anger and claimed that scrapping early release from prison would have stopped convicted terrorist Khan killing two people.
He said that because the "broken hung parliament was preoccupied with blocking Brexit", the Government was unable to make the changes required to keep violent offenders and terrorists in jail for longer.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Merritt said: "What was required was just a dignified approach whereby the politicians would express their regrets, express their condolences to the people affected, and would then get on with campaigning in the election. It wasn't an election issue.
"Where most of us were watching this and seeing a tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes. Instead of seeing a tragedy Boris Johnson saw an opportunity and he went on the offensive.
"He saw an opportunity to score some points in the election – he immediately said 'oh this is Labour's fault, they allowed this to happen, they had this early release policy' and so on.
"At that point… well I had to say something."
Mr Merritt was asked how he felt about his son's picture being used alongside headlines about changing sentencing and comments fro
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