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Her comments came in the aftermath of a van and knife attack that targeted the London Bridge area on Saturday night, killing seven people and injuring at least 48 others.

Speaking from outside Downing Street on Sunday, the prime minister said there was "a new trend in the threat we face," and that although the three most recent terror attacks in the country were not connected by "common networks," they were "bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamic extremism," adding that the "perpetrators are inspired to attack... by copying one another". 

"While we have made significant progress in recent years there is, to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country," May said. "So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society.

"That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations, but the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism we need to live our lives not in a series of segregated, separated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom."

Saturday's attack was the third terrorist incident to hit the UK in three months.

It had harrowing echoes of the one on London's Westminster Bridge in March, when British Muslim convert Khalid Masood rammed his car into pedestrians before crashing into the barriers surrounding parliament.

Meanwhile, British political parties suspended their election campaigns for a second time, just days before Thursday's vote, which May said will not be postponed.