The values of the man who launched Wednesday's deadly attack in London will "not prevail," British Foreign Secretary and former London Mayor Boris Johnson declared Thursday morning.
"I think the lesson that Winston Churchill would want the British people to take from his life and what he stood for was never, never, never, never surrender, never give in," Johnson said in an exclusive interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "We won't, and we will go on fighting this scourge with our American friends and partners."
Johnson on Wednesday attended the meeting of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, held in Washington and organized by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis, and said he found it impressive to see the work, including from the "Muslim world," joining forces to "tackle this scourge."
"If we are going to defeat these guys, we are going to have to engage, not just militarily in Syria and Iraq as we are doing," said Johnson.
Wednesday's attacker was British-born and known to MI-5 and the police, Prime Minister Theresa May has said, and Johnson told the program there is not much more that can be said as the attacks remain under investigation.
"He launched an attack on our democracy, at the heart of our democracy," said Johnson. "This happened many times in the last decades and the values incarnated by that Palace of Westminster will continue to triumph, and whatever he thought he was doing, he will not succeed."
Britain's thoughts are with the victims and their families, said Johnson, and with police officer Keith Palmer, who died after being stabbed while trying to stop the assailant.
"[He] behaved with absolute heroism," said Johnson. "But I think the prime minister got it very well this morning when she said that the House of Commons was going to continue its business and around her in that great city, which I would say is the greatest city on Earth. And the lives of millions of people is continuing absolutely as normal. "
Katty Kay of BBC World News America, a frequent panelist on the "Morning Joe" program, commented that intelligence services "clearly did not prioritize" the attacker, whose name has not yet been released.
"This is not something I can get into," said Johnson. "Here are people who are objects of concern. The important thing to realize is that the kind of extremism that they espouse is dangerous … and I'm afraid they require a huge amount of surveillance, of monitoring, and they move up and down the hierarchy of risk. "
Johnson also called on Internet and social media companies to do more to eliminate incitements and propaganda about terrorism from their websites, including the "information about how to become a terrorist, the radicalizing sermons and messages that needs to come down."
Meanwhile, the cooperation between U.S. and U.K. intelligence services continues to be of "vital importance" to both countries.
"It's an intense and intricate and I would say intimate relationship, and there are, I think, virtually no secrets between the U.S. and the U.K.," said Johnson. "The cooperation is very, very intensive, and it will go on."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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