DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK

Amid rising threats, a £31million security package has now been introduced to keep MPs safe. With political assassinations, violence and disruption becoming commonplace in America, Britons are facing an increasingly fractured climate in the UK too

- Peter Sheridan

FOUR thousand miles and an ocean separate the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park in America and Leighon-Sea in Essex, yet they share a tragic kinship. It was at Leigh-on-Sea that Conservative MP Sir David Amess was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery in 2021, a horrific attack doubtless brought into the minds of every British MP after the shooting of two US politicians and their spouses in Minnesota last week.

As MPs face rising political violence, death threats and intimidation, heightened by tensions surrounding Israel’s prolonged war in Gaza and its escalating conflict with Iran, Britain should look to the American attacks with alarm. Some of the key disruptive forces driving political violence in the States are present in Britain, meaning we risk following in America’s blood-drenched footsteps, down the same nihilistic path.

Polarised politics, social alienation, widespread disinformation and unbridled social media aggression have all raised anger levels and divided communities.

Disturbingly, Americans have come to view violence as a legitimate means of expressing dissent – and the normalisation of violence in British politics could soon prove deadly once again. Political violence is soaring in the UK, as in the US, where a 2023 poll found that 23% of Americans believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country”. One third of Republicans believed violence was a legitimate course of action.

Vance Boelter, the 57-year-old security expert and right-wing activist who shot Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and state Senator John Hoffman at their homes last weekend, had a hit list of 70 targets including multiple politicians, abortion providers and judges.