Do MPs need more protection?

Social workers are not followed in the street or have demonstrators outside their homes. Thats intimidation at a different level. MPs are widely known. Social workers are not. They aren’t going to agree to protect social workers but have agreed to protect some MPs. Also MPs with a high profile are more likely to be the subject of a terror attack than a social worker or be killed. Some might not want protection but for those who are concerned, it should be considered.

I won't be responding to any more of your posts.

You certainly do, given you've spent the morning winding up supporters on Gaza on a different thread.

Ah well.

Many others do.

Not that many other jobs receive the abuse and death threats MPs do. Apart from footballers. MPs are elected to do a job. I don’t care what party they are but intimidation in the street, at their homes and anywhere else isn’t acceptable. We must expect the police to deal with this. Plus marches are no longer benign students. The fringe of them are now intimidating and go too far

Sadly, we are in a society where people do send threats to all manner of people, my friend is a social worker and has had real threats made to her, and she is actually doing something to help society, its vile. A MP does not need help and protection more than she does.

Celebrities get death threats often, MPs are not above them.

MPs do not deserve protection more than anyone else. Joe public are having thier homes broken into, no police available to help
Joe public are getting assaulted in their own homes there are no police are available to help, MPs do not deserve more protection than them.

We need to fight for the government to get a police service that is fit for purpose for all, not just a selected few.

Not that many other jobs receive the abuse and death threats MPs do. Apart from footballers. MPs are elected to do a job. I don’t care what party they are but intimidation in the street, at their homes and anywhere else isn’t acceptable. We must expect the police to deal with this. Plus marches are no longer benign students. The fringe of them are now intimidating and go too far.

Not one person should be allowed to feel threatened outside their own home, not one person should be allowed to be threatened and attacked on line for any reason.
Sadly, the more people make excuses for the government in charge, keep trying to use distraction tactics to make people look the other way at other parties, this will continue.
Also due to the current state of our police services, again sadly, im not sure peoples security should be trumped due to their job role. The police service should be fit for purpose for all.

Obviously it isn't always white men and angry Brexit reform types but plenty of them are. I'm sure you do know the type. If MPs want to try and paint a picture that it's people who go on marches generally, they are being manipulative for their own reasons, because the vast, vast majority of the marches are peaceful. Peaceful people who object to violence, currently in Gaza, rather than creators of it. But then, we know that the government doesn't like any protest, so I don't trust their motives. I did say yesterday that I don't support protesting outside MPs houses, and most decent people wouldn't support any kind of threats or aggression anywhere, including online. I certainly don't.

I haven't personally been on a march or protest for at least 30 years, since I was a student, but when I did the aggressors were very often the police.

Such threats at any time are acceptable. Women have been receiving abuse for years with no action. Doesn’t make it acceptable now just because it’s the latest abuse fest! It is getting worse.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, @OneMerryRedSnail.

Obviously, the people who are threatening the safety and security of our MPs come in all different flavours. Some are men, some are women. Some are Islamists. Some are far right Reform types. Some will have another agenda.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as they start to threaten and intimidate our elected representatives and/or their family/friends, they are all the same. They crease to become "protesters" at that point, they are just this thugs.

But the issues that are causing concern, eg groups of protesters outside parliament or peoples homes, are more often angry white reform type men. I've seen it. Thats not about racism only.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves I have no issue with anyone saying a MP is corrupt if they are. If they have been removed because of corruption that’s fair. However this word is used to describe lots of MPs who are not corrupt. For example, some, quite properly, have other advisory jobs. They keep up to date with their areas of knowledge. I don’t see this as corrupt and we need MPs with varied experience and interests.

Ditto lying. They follow the party line but that’s hardly a new thing. It might feel wrong to some and it might not be what people like, but it’s frequently not lying. It’s an opinion. They do use statistics questionably at times but overall most MPs don’t lie.

Racist. There’s another problem. To me we have a problem when the police don’t deal with issue because they think they will be seen as racist if they do so they didn’t investigate what was going on at Rochdale. Obviously more going on there regarding non investigation and we see the same now at Strathclyde. We now have MPs with similar problems to face regarding what’s racist and what’s not .

It is not racist to say someone is breaking the law. It’s racist to say they are doing so solely because they are a Muslim (or black, or Jewish etc). I really don’t see many MPs who are racist but they can be loose with language which they must guard against. I don’t like the general public using words that whip up hatred that isn’t deserved. Plus with the level of nastiness in the Commons at the moment, do I want to vote for any of them? No. I don’t want them to feel unsafe either. The leaders need to calm things down. All of them.

I agree that most MPs are, on balance, decent people, but it seems to me that the proportion of MPs that don't fit that description may have increased. Is this the Boris effect?

My old Tory MP was a decent woman. I didn't agree with her politics at all, but she was a good constituency MP, she worked hard and I believe that she was motivated by a genuine sense of duty/public service etc.

Our current Tory MP appears to be primarily focused on self promotion and getting herself re-elected, but without any of the hard work or service that might actually make anyone want to vote for her. If you write to her, she doesn't respond. She appears to have no moral fibre at all.

There are certainly other Tories like her, and I've no doubt that there are some equally crap Labour MPs as well. And in the other parties too. I agree that the security threats don't help to bring in the best talent.

I'm not sure what I think about not calling people corrupt or liars etc. I see where you're coming from, and we certainly shouldn't be generalising about all MPs as if they are corrupt liars, because that certainly isn't the case. But where they have actually been found to be corrupt (such as the recent case involving Scott Benton) or lying (as in the case of Boris Johnson) then I think we should call it out for what it is. A failure to do this will surely just send the message that it's normal and they're all at it.

As it did with the jailed Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam too I guess. We really need to keep away from calling MPs corrupt, racist liars. They are not this in the main. None of these things. MPs have always, mostly, followed policy and the whips. If they speak as individuals they need to be elected as individuals. It’s that simple. If you disagree with the line your party is taking, resign and have a by election. Most MPs are decent people but harassment and protests outside their homes is too much and made worse by inflammatory language like corrup - racist - liars. We need to stop this rhetoric. Now.

The fish rots from the head.

Even if most local MPs are decent people, when you have those corrupt racist liars at Westminster, the hate filters through

Most MPs are fairly decent people. Not all are good enough to be MPs and I believe how they are selected is flawed. They are there to take tough decisions and governments of all colours have taken decisions people don’t like.

Many of us don’t like all sorts of policies brought in by all sorts of governments but that’s politics. I don’t want to keep paying into the nhs money pit for worsening services and low productivity. I would be happy to see reform. What I want to see is a government with the brains to look at and implement some reform. We need to look at how other countries work because so many of them are better than us. However any elected members making hard decisions should not be attacked or intimidated by residents. We already have an issue with poor quality MPs. We are making it so only people like Anderson will come forward. We deserve better but decent intelligent people will not do the job. It doesn’t pay enough or offer enough protection.

Yes, this. Two murders in less than a decade plus multiple planned killings. There are only 650 of them- it must be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. We need to rethink their security completely.

You're right @Neriah. Talking of public services, why do they get to strip the NHS when they're unlikely to use it themselves, and just the rest of us who have to?

But I do think mobbing a persons family home is a bit much.

I agree @MrsBennetsPoorNerves I feel homeless and not happy about local candidates at all. I do see political parties exist to get elected but it’s how they are going about it that’s the issue. They should mostly stand behind their manifesto and a shared ethos. Now they have factions - it’s not totally new as we had Derek Hatton et al but it’s not what I want to see.