by Big events can shake everything. Small moments come to matter too.
I remember day one of the EU referendum campaign – Vote Leave had just unveiled their infamous £350m slogan. At the campaign’s first big rally in Manchester I asked Boris Johnson about that misleading headline claim. The audience booed. It wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t upsetting, but that small moment was a total surprise.
One of the campaign team even called me afterwards to apologise, vowing it would never happen again. They hoped the referendum campaign wouldn’t be ugly. They were wrong.
I remember a huge, dreadful day eight weeks later. We’d been interviewing Jeremy Corbyn in Sheffield in the final frantic moments of that same campaign. It was not long after his supporters had also started to boo and jeer at reporters for asking questions. Any hopes of a civil campaign were long gone.
Eight weeks later there was a huge and massive shock. We were in the middle of the usual rush to edit and send our report for the news that night. My editor called saying that the MP Jo Cox had been attacked, and it looked very bad. I stopped what we’d been doing, rushed to the station, and began making calls to try to find out what was going on. When I got to the platform, my phone rang again. Jo had died.
Her killer, Thomas Mair, had a long history of interest in Nazism and far-right extremism. His violent obsessions certainly didn’t begin with the referendum campaign. But Jo’s courageous husband, Brendan, told me a few days later he believed she was murdered for her political views.
He said she had been worried about how politics was “coarsening”, becoming too “tribal and unthinking”. Her death was a hideous shock. Politicians vowed to follow her example of kindness. You don’t need me to tell you whether they stuck to that.
It was a private conversation with another Labour MP a few years later that hammered home how common the threats were becoming. It was September 2018, and after a couple of years of Brexit frustrations in Parliament – and hideous infighting in the Labour Party – the MP was in agony over the dangers they faced just for doing their job.
They’d been appealing to their local police force after weeks of threats in their constituency, but felt they were being brushed off.
They told me about the security grilles, cameras, alarms, and other equipment they’d installed to try to keep them and their staff safe. But the MP didn’t want to go public, fearing it would make matters worse. It was no secret that lots of them had received abuse by that stage – in real life, not just on social media. It was a familiar topic of conversation around Westminster’s ancient corridors.
As reporters, we were by then used to being hassled and heckled around the fringes of the demonstrations that had become part of Westminster’s daily backdrop. I’d developed a habit of walking as quickly as I could with my head down past the crowds.
But from that moment, I understood a shocking new norm – some MPs were carrying genuine fears for their lives every day. “These threats are real,” they said. Their tears and distress made it plain.
A couple of months later, I remember those regular demonstrations taking a different turn. A couple of small groups would walk alongside MPs as they tried to move around the tiny SW1 postcode, hurling abuse and accusations at close quarters and recording them on their phones.
You could see these groups huddling and waiting for a famous face, ready to pounce. If the politician responded in any way, these groups had footage that might go viral. Ignore it, the politician could be accused of being rude and shunning the public’s voice. The first few times I saw it, it felt shocking. It seemed to be deliberate provocation for the purposes of creating content for social media.
During that whole period, just as now, there were many people with strong and deeply held views using their legitimate right to protest. Goodness knows, the public’s frustration with politicians is often entirely understandable.
Protest is important. Many MPs themselves are veterans of noisy demonstrations. Politicians love a good argument – a vigorous debate. And of course there have been risks to politicians and Parliament before, whether from the IRA for many years, or terror threats in recent times.
But surrounding politicians and screaming abuse, or trying to block their path as they try to walk down the street, are different. Now, almost any MP will tell you, what can look like an ambush can happen at any time.
These moments I remember, big and small, track what has been a journey to a different kind of politics. Many of the people we choose to represent us really believe their personal safety, and that of their families, is routinely at stake.
And this week marks another major moment. The Speaker of the House of Commons says he made a decision to break the unwritten rules of Parliament because of those risks. He says he made a mistake in allowing a vote on Labour’s motion, because he was trying to protect his colleagues from public anger and danger.
