The age of rage “Many members of Parliament now regard death threats the way the rest of us think about long commutes or boring meetings,” said Helen Lewis in the Financial Times: as “a grim but unavoidable part of the job.” At a Westminster Hall debate last week, it was revealed that the Conservative whips’ office dealt with “at least three credible threats” to Tory MPs every week. Labour’s Paula Sherriff said that the last election was the “most brutal” in memory. Another Labour MP, Diane Abbott, “a rare black woman at the top of politics”, revealed that she had racist and sexist abuse directed at her every day, both online and offline. “I’ve had death threats,” she said, “I’ve had people tweeting that I should be hung if ‘they could find a tree big enough to take my weight’.”