Obviously, you know there is a lot that happens in Westminster that never makes it out of the political bubble. You read the papers; you know that parliament has a pervasive culture of omertà. You’re aware of the fact that MPs get up to all sorts of tawdry and odd things, and that journalists, for good and bad reasons, don’t always write about them. You may not be privy to all that happens in the corridors of power, but you can just tell that much of it doesn’t get reported.
Unfortunately, because of irksome things like “privacy laws” and “needing to respect my sources”, I always abided by this code of silence while working as a political journalist. There is a lot I know, and I really shouldn’t tell you about any of it. Well, nearly any of it. I read the news today and it made me want to throw caution to the wind a bit, and speak about something that is usually kept under wraps. Are you ready? Has your interest been sufficiently piqued? Is your appetite tantalisingly whetted?
Right, here goes: you have no idea just how much abuse politicians receive these days. You may have seen the odd interview on threatening emails, or the occasional story about rude posts on social media, but they don’t even scratch the surface. Over in Westminster, female members of parliament will talk about their house having to be fitted with all manner of security measures as straightforwardly as they would discuss their shopping.
Many prominent MPs can and do privately discuss hapless and serious attempts on their lives with little more than a shrug, because of how common they are. On one occasion, one former minister told me that a man who’d stalked her had ended up in prison but, if she were to get murdered one day, she assumed it would be by him, once he got out. She barely batted an eyelid while telling me this.
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Thank god for James Cleverly. No, really…
There are many other stories I could share on the topic but which could reveal the MPs who told me their stories, and so I won’t. What I can say instead is that I read the Electoral Commission’s review of the last local elections in England and wasn’t surprised by any of it. According to them, abuse of election candidates is a “serious and growing concern”, and what their chief executive called their “single biggest worry” as an organisation.
Predictably, female, non-white and disabled would-be politicians were most at risk, with more than three quarters of women polled saying that they had, on at least one occasion, avoided campaigning on their own. It’s an absolutely dire state of affairs and, unfortunately, one that really shouldn’t be surprising. Why, then, is it being talked about so little outside Westminster?
One possible answer is that it just feels hard to talk about the lives of MPs in a way that doesn’t seem needlessly elitist, or too much like navel-gazing. In a way, it feels similar to the issue of parliament threatening to burn to a crisp because no one wants to approve state funding for its repair. Times are bleak, and it’s tough to make the argument that politicians need all the support they can get.
Still, it ought to be possible to look at the issue differently, and argue that what concerns Westminster concerns us all. You should care that people are getting harassed and threatened, and even if you don’t, you should want the best possible people to run the country. Those people will either not stand or end up standing down early if their jobs are impossible to do safely. This is something Andy Burnham, proud man-of-the-people that he is, should concern himself with sooner rather than later. He may enjoy bashing the political elites when it suits him, but it is now his job to make sure that those political elites remain safe.
