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Speaking in the House of Commons, Britains Prime Minister Theresa May solemnly listed the diverse nationalities of those injured in Wednesdays lone wolf attack in London, underlining the global nature of the British capital and its diversity. She emphasized the attacker was British-born.

But some British nationalists and nativists have been quick to blame whole communities for the attack, accusing migrants and liberals for having created the conditions for Islamist terrorism.

Two narratives are being fought over in newspapers and social media following the attack that left four dead and 40 injured. One emphasizing the importance of unity and embracing plurality, the other tarring foreigners as the threat and blaming migrants and freedom of movement in the European Union for terrorism.

In addition to 12 Britons admitted to hospital, we know the victims include three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, one American and two Greeks, May told a subdued House of Commons.

A terrorist came to the place where people of all nationalities and cultures gather to celebrate what it means to be free. And he took out his rage indiscriminately against innocent men, women and children, said May.

WATCH: May addresses House of Commons

We are united by our humanity, responded Britains main opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

But shortly after the exchanges between lawmakers emphasizing the importance of diversity, Nigel Farage, one of Britains leading Brexiters, struck a different tone.

Despite May confirming police believe the assailant was British born, Farage used the London attack to blame politicians who embrace multiculturalism and lambasted immigration mainly from the Middle East for inviting in terrorism.

FILE - Former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in London, Nov. 29, 2016.

Weve made some terrible mistakes in this country, and it really started with the election of Tony Blair back in 1997, who said he wanted to build a multicultural Britain, said Farage, the former leader of Britains UK Independence Party.

The problem with multiculturalism is that it leads to divided communities ... We have now a fifth column living inside these European countries. I do actually think that the moment has come for us to actually point the blame. What these politicians have done in the space of just 15 years may well affect the way we live in this country over the next 100 years, he added.

Defend 'our culture'

Katie Hopkins, a TV personality and newspaper columnist, was more scathing, arguing the English must defend our culture. London is a city so desperate to be seen as tolerant ... Liberals convince themselves multiculturalism works because we all die together, too, she wrote in a column for the right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail just hours after the attack.

She added, "This place is just like Sweden. Terrified of admitting the truth about the threat we face, about the horrors committed by the migrants we failed to deter, because to admit that we are sinking, and fast, would be to admit that everything the liberals believe is wrong. That multiculturalism has not worked.

In Birmingham, the Midlands city that saw law-enforcement raids late Wednesday on the homes of people suspected of being connected in some way to the London attacker, locals fear they will be tarred as terrorists and there will be a backlash.

Muslim anxiety

Britain's top counterterror officer, Mark Rowley, has acknowledged that Muslim communities "will feel anxious at this time", but has said police will work with community leaders to ensure protection. Birmingham is home to large South Asian and Muslim communities, and last year hosted Europe's largest celebrations for the Eid festival, a major Muslim holiday.

Police outside a property in Birmingham, England, March 23, 2017, following an attack on Wednesday in London.

Thursday, local police assisted Birminghams Central Mosque in distributing more than 50,000 copies of a booklet explaining the Muslim faith, entitled Terrorism Is Not Islam, to schools and shops.

Mosque chairman, Mohammed Afzal, said the attacker's motives had nothing to do with true Islam. Whoever the attacker is and whatever the cause may be, nothing justifies taking lives of innocent people, which is completely against the good of humanity," he said. "We call upon those that may have even a shred of sympathy for the like-minded terrorists to shake their conscience and realize that such acts are the work of evil and not the work of God-fearing people.

David Aaronovitch, an author and broadcaster, believes the attack should not be allowed to trigger a wholesale tarring of Muslim communities in Britain with the terrorist brush.

In his column in The Times he argued it is important not to cede political space to the fanatics, the extreme nationalists, the fundamentalists. To always think, despite the temptations just to react.

Armed police officers secure the area near the Houses of Parliament in central London on March 23, 2017 the day after the March 22 terror attack in Westminster claimed at least three lives.

Others, though, are keen to react, determined that a nativist, anti-Islam narrative becomes dominant. Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist, rushed Wednesday to the Houses of Parliament as emergency crews were assisting the wounded and claimed Britain is at war with Muslims and labeled the attack the work of a foreigner. This is the reality. The reality is these people are waging war on us," he said.

Bystanders, and even some reporters, denounced him for what they saw as an opportunistic intervention at the site of an atrocity, one designed to inflame.

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Liberals, Nativists Tussle in Newspapers, Tweets Over Narrative of London Attack - Voice of America

The contest changes, but the result remains the same: Jeremy Corbyns preferred candidate defeated in a parliamentary selection. Afzhal Khan is Labours candidate in the Manchester Gorton by-election and the overwhelming favourite to be the seats next MP.

Although Khan, an MEP, was one of the minority of Labours European MPs to dissent from a letter from the European parliamentary Labour party calling for Jeremy Corbyn to go in the summer of 2016, he backed Andy Burnham and Tom Watson in 2015, and it is widely believed, fairly or unfairly, that Khan had, as one local activist put it, the brains to know which way the wind was blowing rather than being a pukka Corbynite.

For the leaders office, it was a double defeat; their preferred candidate, Sam Wheeler, was kept off the longlist, when the partys Corbynsceptics allied with the partys BAME leadership to draw up an all ethnic minority shortlist, and Yasmine Dar, their back-up option, was narrowly defeated by Khan among members in Manchester Gorton.

But even when the leadership has got its preferred candidate to the contest, they have been defeated. That even happened in Copeland, where the shortlist was drawn up by Corbynites and designed to advantage Rachel Holliday, the leaders office preferred candidate.

Why does the Labour left keep losing? Supporters combination of bad luck and bad decisions for the defeat.

In Oldham West, where Michael Meacher, a committed supporter of Jeremy Corbyns, was succeeded by Jim McMahon, who voted for Liz Kendall, McMahon was seen to be so far ahead that they had no credible chance of stopping him. Rosena Allin-Khan was a near-perfect candidate to hold the seat of Tooting: a doctor at the local hospital, the seats largest employer, with links to both the Polish and Pakistani communities that make up the seats biggest minority blocs. Gillian Troughton, who won the Copeland selection, is a respected local councillor.

But the leadership has also made bad decisions, some claim. The failure to get a candidate in Manchester Gorton was particularly egregious, as one trade unionist puts it: We all knew that Gerald was not going to make it [until 2020], they had a local boy with good connections to the trade unions, that contest should have been theirs for the taking. Instead, they lost control of the selection panel because Jeremy Corbyn missed an NEC meeting the NEC is hung at present as the Corbynsceptics sacrificed their majority of one to retain the chair and with it their best chance of taking the seat.

Others close to the leadership point out that for the first year of Corbyns leadership, the leaders office was more preoccupied with the struggle for survival than it was with getting more of its people in. Decisions in by-elections were taken on the hop and often in a way that led to problems later down the line. It made sense to keep Mo Azam, from the partys left, off the shortlist in Oldham West when Labour MPs were worried for their own seats and about the Ukip effect if Labour selected a minority candidate. But that enraged the partys minority politicians and led directly to the all-ethnic-minority shortlist in Manchester Gorton.

They also point out that the party's councillor base, from where many candidates are drawn, is still largely Corbynsceptic, though they hope that this will change in the next round of local government selections. (Councillors must go through a reselection process at every election.)

But the biggest shift has very little to do with the Labour leadership. The big victories for the Labour left in internal battles under Ed Miliband were the result of Unite and the GMB working together. Now they are, for various reasons, at odds and the GMB has proven significantly better at working shortlists and campaigning for its members to become MPs. That helps Corbynsceptics. The reason why so many of the unions supported Jeremy the first time, one senior Corbynite argues, Is they wanted to move the Labour party a little bit to the left. They didnt want a socialist transformation of the Labour party. And actually if you look at the people getting selected they are not Corbynites, but they are not Blairites either, and thats what the unions wanted.

Regardless of why, it means that, two years into Corbyns leadership, the Labour left finds itself smaller in parliament than it was at the beginning.

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Europe's elections show why liberals should avoid fatalism - New Statesman

Ayaan Hirsi Ali criticized what she considered the "apologetic attitude" some liberals around the world have toward identifying the religious component to Islamic terrorism.

Ali, a women rights activist who was raised Muslim in Somalia but later became an apostate, called such a mindset "masochistic and stupid."

She said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that radical Islamic terrorists "don't go to liberals and say thank you so much, we'll stop terrorizing you" because of some on the left refuse to identify terrorism's religious component.

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Islamists only seek a Sharia-compliant world, Ali said, in the wake of Wednesday's attack in London, a city with progressive leadership, "and whoever is in their way is their enemy."

She said anyone who does not understand that should not be legislating policy.

Carlson said terror groups believe Westerners do not have moral standing to critique Islam, and Ali agreed, adding that they sometimes will consider fellow Muslims illegitimate if they do not comply with their belief system.

Ali said that President Trump's Youngstown, Ohio campaign speech first showed her that he took the terror threat seriously, and selectively praised his travel ban.

She said the ban was a good idea but was "clumsily" enacted.

"It's incredibly difficult to vet people coming from [those countries]," she said, maintaining that he should have consulted more lawyers and experts to root out any inefficiencies in the document.

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Hirsi Ali: Islamic Terrorists 'Don't Go to Liberals and Say Thank You ... - Fox News Insider

There is, in some precincts on the left, an earnest attempt to understand Trump voters, those strange creatures that are standing by their man, and figure out how the Democrats might win them back.

During the campaign I talked about Donald Democrats and how the billionaires appeal to working-class folks might help him win the election, as he did in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The Dems used to be the party of the working class, but Trump made a connection that the party of global trade deals and climate change failed to forge.

Democrats often sound patronizing when speaking of Trump votersIts hard to win over voters whom youre insulting, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote last month.

But now theres a counterargument emerging about Trump voters, which can be summarized thusly: Screw em.

This mad-as-hell view has been galvanized by reports that many Trump voters may lose their health insurance if the House version of ObamaCare repeal passes. The liberal gloaters say it serves them right.

From this perspective, those voters are too dumb to vote in their own economic self-interest and theyre probably gone for good. So its better to energize the Bernie Sanders base than to struggle to understand why many blue-collar Americans feel alienated from the Obama/Clinton party.

Frank Rich, the former Times columnist now with New York magazine, makes this argument in ridiculing what he calls Hillbilly Chic.

He questions whether pandering to Trump voters is another counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness. Rather than feeling everyones pain, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it?

Rich admits that the party is a wreck, with no power and most of its leaders of Social Security age. But he sees Trump voters as basically synonymous with the GOP:

That makes it all the more a fools errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day. If we are free to loathe Trump, we are free to loathe his most loyal voters, who have put the rest of us at risk.

Sounds like Frank is weaponizing his own anger.

I just dont get the loathing, unless you subscribe to the view that anyone who supports Trump is by definition odious. If the Democrats write off everyone who backed Trump, even if it was because they didnt trust Hillary, arent they making it harder to put together an electoral majority of liberals and minorities?

Salon takes a different tack with a critical piece titled The Smug Style in American Politics. (There are photos of Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann, though they have nothing to do with the article.)

The story by Conor Lynch says the Democratic view is of large numbers of American people voting against their apparent interests because of their ignorance and cultural backwardness.

After decades of watching millions of Americans vote for right-wing charlatans who advocated economic policies that serve the wealthy and screw everyone else, some liberals have basically given up on appealing to these perceived yokels, who seem to care more about criminalizing abortion and hoarding guns than obtaining health are and decent wages. They are dumb, credulous and often intolerant; so why should we progressive, rational, forward-thinking liberals sympathize or try to reason with them? Let them lose their health care; maybe theyll learn something this time around (though we all know they wont).

Lynch concludes that both parties have failed these voters and that cheering as people lose their health insurance may not be the best way to go about this.

Ya think?

We live in a divided country. And when Barack Obama won in 2008, some of those who opposed him tried to marginalize him and vowed to take our country back.

Do some in Obamas party want to do the same thing now? Blame not just the Republican president but the 60 million people who put him in the White House? Isnt that a big, well, smug?

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

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Smugness watch: Some liberals say it's okay to hate Trump voters - Fox News

OTTAWA The future is coming at you, fast, and the Liberal government says it knows you're getting anxious and potentially angry.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau delivered a federal budget Wednesday that aims to get Canadians ready for a changing world and potentially shield the Liberals from the forces that brought U.S. President Donald Trump to power.

"Everyday folks who work hard to provide for their families are worried about the future," Morneau said in his speech to the House of Commons as he tabled the 2017 federal budget, the second since the Liberals formed a majority government in 2015.

"They're worried that rapid technological change, the seemingly never-ending need for new skills and growing demands on our time will mean that their kids won't have the same opportunities that they had. And who can blame them?" Morneau said.

After setting up the doom and the gloom, Morneau spoke of the good news: Canadians have always been able to adapt to changing circumstances.

The budget, which projects a deficit of $28.5 billion this coming fiscal year, including a contingency reserve, is designed to help them get there.

It includes about $5.2 billion for skills development as the government plans to help Canadians adapt their education and employment training to a diversifying economy at a time when the lower price of oil has meant the natural resource sector can no longer be counted on to provide jobs or sustain federal revenues.

Measures include letting out-of-work Canadians go back to school or receive new job training without having to give up their employment insurance benefits, a pilot project to test ways to make it easier for adults who have already been in the workforce to access student loans and grants and doing more to promote careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to young people.

The Liberals do not just want to help Canadians find jobs in the future. They also want to try and bring that future about.

The budget commits nearly $3 billion to support innovation over the next five years and promises to develop an innovation and skills plan that will target six sectors the Liberal government see as good bets for spurring economic growth and creating well-paying jobs: advanced manufacturing, clean technology, the agri-food sector, digital industries, clean resources and health and bio-sciences.

As the Liberals work to ensure everyone can find a job in the new economy, they are also giving a boost to many who were left behind by the traditional one, such as women and those from indigenous communities.

The budget commits $7 billion over the next decade to help increase access to affordable child care, will allow women to begin maternity leave earlier and provides more financial support for those caring for an ill or aging relative all seen as ways to help increase the participation of women in the workforce.

The budget document, for the first time in Canadian history, also includes a section on how many of its measures impact men and women in different ways, with a promise to do a deeper gender-based analysis for the 2018 budget.

While this budget is relatively thin on net new spending, all these new promises still come with a cost, especially since the federal government is still footing the bill for the gigantic, ongoing commitments from last year.

Canadians can expect a five-cent increase in EI premiums in fiscal 2018-19, up to $1.68 per $100 of insurable earnings, with some of that additional cost coming from the measures that will give more people access to benefits.

The government is also looking for savings in other ways that will hit the pocketbooks of many Canadians, by eliminating the public transit tax credit, raising the tax on alcohol by two per cent beginning Thursday and changing the rules so that ride-sharing businesses, such as Uber, are subject to the same sales taxes as traditional taxis.

The deficit still remains nearly three times the $10-billion limit the Liberals promised in their campaign platform and while the budget's projections show it shrinking over time as the government expects economic growth to pick up steam, there is still no official word on when they expect to get back to balance.

This budget also removes a pledge to reduce the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the course of their mandate, which, after busting past their promise to eliminate the deficit by 2019, was the only fiscal target they had left.

Follow @smithjoanna on Twitter

Joanna Smith, The Canadian Press

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Budget 2017: Liberals try to ease anxiety and get Canada ready for the future - BarrieToday