‘We have entered an era of extreme protest’: The dangers facing MPs on the campaign trail

Whether it is Nigel Farage having objects thrown towards his head or Labour politician Rosie Duffield having to spend £2,000 a week on bodyguards, it is clear that the threat of violence against those participating in the democratic process does not recognise party lines.

Elected officials have long faced the threat of abuse in many forms, but the current climate of intimidation is one where antagonism is being replaced with danger. And everywhere in the general election campaign, the shadows cast by the horrific murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess hang over the current levels of abuse and threats made to our democratic representatives.

“This is a really grave moment for our country and for many of the individuals involved who have endured a level of threat that I’ve never encountered before,” says Lord Walney, former Labour MP for Barrow and Furness and author of the independent review on political violence and disruption. “The threats made public are the tip of the iceberg because MPs understandably don’t want to draw attention to what is happening.

“We have entered an era of extreme protest in which different activists of different ideologies think it is OK to use extreme intimidation, disruption and at times even violence to make their point because they think their cause makes the end justify the means.”

It was in Barnsley on Tuesday when Nigel Farage, campaigning from the upper-deck of an open-top bus and resplendent in a Barbour and tweed flat-cap, suddenly had to take evasive action when a cup and another object were thrown at him. Farage feared one might have contained wet cement. A 28-year-old man was charged with threatening behaviour on Wednesday. It came just days after Farage had a banana milkshake thrown over him as he left a pub during a walkabout in Clacton, the constituency where he is standing as a candidate for Parliament. It has now been revealed he has been offered private security by the Home Office in response to the attacks.

Despite the widespread condemnation of these incidents from across the political spectrum, many less sympathetic voices – inevitably on social media – could be found, downplaying or even justifying the interventions.

“We are at risk of fuelling the problem by, consciously or subconsciously, taking a different attitude towards the people we don’t like,” says Lord Walney. “This comes up regularly with Nigel Farage – but if you are prepared to accept or turn a blind eye when it happens to your opponents then there will be people on the other side who will do the same thing. That creates an atmosphere conducive to intimidation and even violence so we have to say uniformly that it is completely unacceptable, even if you disagree with the views of the person being attacked. You cannot say anyone has ‘got it coming’ because as soon as you take that attitude then everyone else can take that attitude and the whole system is weakened.”

Charlotte Nichols, the Labour candidate for Warrington North, agrees. “If you condone what happened to Nigel Farage then there’s going to be someone who feels as strongly about, say, Angela Rayner or Wes Streeting, who is going to feel they are justified in their behaviour as the person who throws things at Farage.”

The “causes” of the threats MPs and candidates face are disconcertingly disparate. One of the most notable and worrying aspects of the current levels of aggression in our politics is that it is without pattern. MPs can be abused and intimidated because of their attitudes towards Gaza; Duffield, who is campaigning to be re-elected in Canterbury, is harassed because of her views on gender; Amess was murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist; Cox by a far-Right extremist.

Whereas an MP has always faced anger over something as seemingly prosaic as the provision of services or the failures of a local council, many feel as though our political culture is besieged on all sides from those who want to circumvent any consensus on respect and legitimate behaviour. What would once have been clearly delineated as extreme is in danger of being normalised.

“The level of risk is stubbornly high,” says Nichols, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 2019. “There is a lot of anger around, over a number of issues. MPs and our offices become the last port of call when they’ve been failed by other institutions; they are already angry and feel let down. We become the vent point for failures in society more generally. However, my election campaign has been better compared to 2019 – perhaps that’s down to the party I represent and where I am.”

“There is an unspoken threat of physical menace and in the case of the extreme pro-Palestine protesters who disrupt council and constituency meetings to a standstill, this is corrosive,” adds Lord Walney. “Some candidates will fear physical attack and for others it’s a highly aggressive confrontation which you would see as unacceptable in any other field and it’s designed to subdue and cow people rather than change their mind.”

In February, the Government announced an extra £31 million investment “to enhance police capabilities, increase private sector security provisions for those facing a higher risk, and expand cyber security advice to locally elected representatives”.

Sunday marks the eighth anniversary of Cox’s murder and, speaking to the BBC on Wednesday Su Moore, the chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation, made it clear how concerned she was over the situation. “People don’t realise how serious this is… it isn’t just a bit of heckling out and about in public or some cross words exchanged on social media.

“It’s things like firebombing people’s houses, having their tyres slashed, people having their families threatened, particularly for female politicians, multiple threats of sexual violence.” In February the Conservative Mike Freer stood down from his Finchley and Golders Green constituency in response to a number of threats – including an arson attack and another from the man who went on to murder Amess.

“The most extraordinary thing that came out of this is that there are some parliamentarians – who haven’t been publicly identified – who are requiring levels of protection that are traditionally only available to the very most senior cabinet ministers in high-risk security-related roles such as home secretary, defence secretary and Northern Ireland secretary,” Lord Walney observes. “That contributes to an atmosphere of fear and anxiety that is very widespread among people who put themselves forward for election.”

Despite the extra provision, which had never previously existed during an election campaign, as MPs have gone back to being merely candidates, the new resource will be insufficient to mitigate the frequency and variety of threats MPs face.

“If you are someone getting a lot of threats and abuse when Parliament is sitting, and then you know you are going out knocking on strangers’ doors and perhaps campaigning in places you are not familiar with, then there is going to be a genuine concern,” adds Nichols. “In the period just before the election there was a lot of concern because people’s offices were getting vandalised and people [were] turning up to protests at their house. Largely, but not exclusively, that was because of Gaza. A lot of MPs aren’t publishing their addresses on the ballot paper anymore.”

Lord Walney believes we have to “reset our thinking… so there are sufficient deterrents”. We must be “clearer that people’s sacrosanct right to protest does not include intimidation and implied threat of violence which is an attempt to coerce and corrode our democracy”.

“Acting in this way,” he adds, “is not an essential part of democracy, which I think some people make the mistake of thinking. We need to direct anger and passion that people understandably feel into trying to change minds in a democracy. That is what democracy is about, rather than trying to short circuit the process by menacing people.”