Why has the political debate following Sir David Amess’s killing moved so swiftly to focus on civility in politics? It’s a reasonable question that a lot of people – including my colleague Sam Leith – have been asking. The police are treating Amess’s death as a terrorist attack, and yet other MPs have been talking about the need to stop online abuse and to encourage a more open political culture. The link between people shouting at their MPs about how they voted and the motives of Islamist terrorists is, to put it politely, somewhat unproven.
Politicians are always high-value targets for terrorists in any country, regardless of how mean or otherwise the rest of society is to them. People were much more deferential towards MPs when the IRA was busy trying – and in two cases, succeeding – to kill them. The aftermath of Ian Gow’s death, for instance, was not full of his mourning colleagues demanding that the general public be nicer to them. So why has this presumed terror attack had a different effect?
One of the reasons for this logical leap from MPs in particular is that the stabbing brought home to each of them how very vulnerable they still are. Even with the installation of security measures at their homes and in their constituency offices, MPs know that when they go to surgeries, they are an easy target for an attacker. Few of them have felt they are getting safer or the environment around them less hostile since Jo Cox was murdered.
Cox’s death was recent: a large number of people who were MPs then are still on the green benches now and the fresh pain of that death is another reason the debate has gone in the direction it has: there is a palpable sense of dismay in parliament that once again members are paying tribute to a colleague killed while doing their job.
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