Abuse of MPs is not getting better – it's worse than ever

“If anything positive is to come out of this latest awful tragedy, it is that the quality of political discourse has to change,” Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, wrote in two Sunday newspapers following the murder of David Amess. “The conversation has to be kinder and based on respect. This incident has shown that there is unity across the political divide in support of democracy. The hate, which drives these attacks, has to end.”

- ANDREW GRICE

It’s hard to disagree. The problem is that we have heard it all before. The grief over the loss of Amess, and the desire for a gentler, kinder politics that now grips Westminster, is exactly the same mood that followed the murder of Jo Cox, five years ago, when she was on her way to meet constituents in her Batley and Spen seat.

Cox was one of the few MPs with whom I became personal friends during my four decades as a journalist pounding the Westminster beat. So for me, the killing of Amess, another selfless MP who, like Cox, was motivated by doing good rather than self-advancement, was doubly painful. I could not stop myself reliving the awful day when Cox died; I remembered every detail of it after the news broke that she had been attacked.

Then I recalled the atmosphere in the Westminster village at the time, and asked myself: “What’s changed?” Things have got worse, not better. MPs, particularly women, are subjected to even more vile attacks on social media; threats of rape and murder have become common currency. There are repeated complaints by MPs that the police response to such threats is patchy. That will surely have to change now.