Attempted assassination of Donald Trump shows us how dangerous politics has become - Jayne Dowle

Kim Leadbeater, who took over as Labour MP for Spen Valley following the horrific murder of her sister, Jo Cox, in 2016, by a Far Right extremist a week before the EU Referendum, says threats to politicians' safety and the strain on their mental health put British democracy in a “dangerous” place.

It is only a few short weeks since our own General Election was marred by crowd violence. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was assailed by flying objects in Clacton, Essex, where he is now serving as MP, and here in Barnsley. And intimidation of parliamentary candidates was rife.

Labour’s Jess Phillips, who retained her seat in Yardley, Birmingham, with a slashed majority of 693 votes, faced barracking from Pro-Palestine members of the crowd at the election night count, and had to shout above the protestors to make herself heard.

Her fellow Labour MP Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham Ladywood), appointed Lord Chancellor in the new government, said in her post-victory speech that masked men had disrupted one of her community meetings, “terrifying” people in attendance.

Another UK politician has been murdered since Jo Cox tragically lost her life, leaving behind a devastated husband, family and two young children. Conservative MP Sir David Amess, who served Southend West, was stabbed 21 times in October 2021 by a terrorist in his own constituency office. How many more wake-up calls do we need?

In January, it was reported that Sir David’s daughter, Katherine, is taking legal action against the police and the Home Office for failing to prevent her father’s death. High Court papers show she has filed a personal injury claim against the authorities.

Former Labour and Independent MP (for Barrow in Furness) John Woodcock, now Lord Walney and an independent advisor on political violence and disruption, warns that Britain risks another politician being killed.

The shooting of Donald Trump, now confirmed as the Republican Presidential candidate, was a “vivid reminder of the vulnerability of all politicians”, Lord Walney says, expressing his fears about “the growth in the UK of US-style politics of aggressive confrontation and intimidation which is unfortunately, exactly the toxic environment that could lead to another assassination attempt on a UK politician, of which we have already tragically seen a number in recent years.”

After hearing “horrific” stories from candidates and constituency workers and volunteers during the General Election, Lord Walney has written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and security minister Dan Jarvis, both Yorkshire MPs, about his fears of a “concerted campaign by extremists”. He wants them to investigate whether groups in different constituencies are working together and to document what he calls the “dark underbelly” of abuse.

Speaking to a national newspaper, Lord Walney said he believed intimidation was increasingly being used as “a core electoral strategy to try to either get candidates defeated or bully candidates into submission”.

Any right-minded person would agree that this has to stop, right now. He is urging the government to commission a short inquiry into the recent intimidation of parliamentary candidates. But if it happens, will this go far enough, deep enough and wide enough?

Will it encompass social media, including the ‘dark web’, and encrypted communications? Will it be courageous enough to tackle indoctrination without fear of reprisals? Will it talk to the vulnerable youths hanging out on the street corner, at risk of being sucked into organised anti-establishment factions? Will it ask the police and community leaders to be brutally honest about security at gatherings where the risk of political violence is high; how tough do they really need to be?

The roots of this new politics of hate goes much further than the tip of the iceberg, the frightening events that individuals in the political public eye are experiencing.

Each incident is different, obviously, but all hold common threads. Borne of utter disenchantment and disaffection with our long-established channels of democracy, political violence comes to the surface when people feel they have no other way to make their point known.