Panic alarms. Stab proof vests. Bomb protection devices on letterboxes. This is the apparatus of working life for many of Britain’s MPs today.
Through a series of interviews with MPs, charities and security experts, i can reveal the extent of the dangers facing politicians today, the impact on their lives and the risks to our democracy.
Together they reveal three layers of danger: the public, the private, and the secret. Of the public dangers, they describe what many can see in flashes on social media: the rape threats and death threats to them, their families, and their staff. In the media we see the confrontations in the street or outside their own homes.
But in private, they describe the devastation: their fear, the concern for their loved ones, and the grim calculations they are forced to make between their commitment to public service and the need to stay safe.
It’s the secret dangers, however, that tell a more unsettling story: who and what is lurking on the dark web, and the monitoring of extremism that is never made public.
The stakes have never been higher. As Britain heads into a general election later this year amid extraordinary international friction – Israel-Gaza, Russia-Ukraine and Donald Trump’s possible second term – the domestic landscape is febrile, sparked by both geopolitical ruptures and homegrown fury. With poverty, distrust, and division rife, those speaking out today fear where Britain is heading – and what could happen before a new government is elected.
The story begins one Friday night late last year.
On 24 November, 83-year-old Labour MP Barry Sheerman found himself unconscious on the ground, bleeding. He was in rural Yorkshire, about 10 miles from his Huddersfield constituency. After a meal out with a friend he had asked the restaurant staff to call him a cab. He waited outside.
“Suddenly a taxi came over, slightly away from the main drag. I ran down to the cab and opened the door – there were two people in the car – and I said, ‘Are you the taxi for Barry Sheerman?’ Next thing I know, I hit the ground and my nose was bleeding badly. I was knocked out.”
As Mr Sheerman speaks to i three months on, he still doesn’t know exactly what happened. But at A&E later that night it was clear to the clinicians. “The doctor said, ‘That isn’t a fall, that is a punch.’”
Barry Sheerman is Britain’s longest continuously serving Labour MP. No one was held responsible for what happened. “It was investigated,” he said. “But no charges were pressed. The police couldn’t find evidence of who had done it.”
Although the motive for the attack was unknown, the outcome was clear: an MP knocked unconscious in the street. It focused Mr Sheerman’s mind on the very serious issue of MP security and safety.
It wasn’t the first time Mr Sheerman or his staff had faced danger. The other incidents involved threats, including death threats credible enough for arrests and charges to be brought. He revealed the incidents in the Commons, imploring the Government to do more to protect MPs.
But this time he didn’t. He seems almost embarrassed about it.
“People keep this secret,” he said of his fellow politicians. “I was reluctant at first to say this happened to me.” He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident, until now. Although his nose has healed, the impact remains. “I’m nervous of going on the Tube. I’m nervous when I move around.” Cameras were already installed around his home after previous incidents, but it’s when travelling that he believes MPs are at their most vulnerable. He did eventually tell colleagues in the Labour Party.
“I got some very nice comments when I got a punched in the face but neither Parliament nor my party gave me much support,” he said. Specifically, he wasn’t offered counselling. “There’s nothing like that in the House of Commons.” The Speaker’s chaplain was supportive, however, and he “got a nice text from Keir Starmer”.
Despite standing down at the next election later this year after 45 years in the Commons (which he announced in 2021), Mr Sheerman now wants to raise awareness of the safety of politicians more generally. And this includes facing the unthinkable, that another MP could be murdered. “I fear that that will happen,” he said, “and I want it not to happen. We’ve got to be much more careful in the future.”
“It’s time,” he said, “for a reality check.”
Kim Leadbeater thought that reality check was going to happen when her sister Jo Cox, then the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered in 2016. But five years after Cox was shot and stabbed by a far-right white supremacist a week before the Brexit referendum, David Amess, the Conservative MP for Southend West, was fatally stabbed by an Islamic State sympathiser.
Now, with a political atmosphere even more fraught, one of Ms Leadbeater’s immediate concerns is that more MPs will quit politics over fears for their own safety. After Mike Freer’s announcement last month that he will stand down as the Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green following multiple threats and an arson attack on his constituency office, Ms Leadbeater told i, “He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last”.
Last year, Mhairi Black, the SNP MP, revealed she would be standing down due to both the “toxic environment” of Westminster and the safety fears that have affected her and her family. “They [her family] see the panic alarms in the house, they see the bomb bag over the letter box and it’s just a very stark reminder their daughter is a target,” she said at the time. But it was the recent decision by Mr Freer that prompted a new wave of concern surrounding the security of politicians.
“I heard someone on the radio say, ‘This has got to be a turning point’,” said Ms Leadbeater, who now represents her sister’s constituency, “and I thought, ‘God, here we go again’. It was a [supposed] ‘turning point’ when Jo was murdered. It was a ‘turning point’ when David Amess was murdered. Now it’s a ‘turning point’ because another MP stepped down. So when is that turning point going to come, where as a society we all decide that we want to make our politics not just safer, but less toxic?”
Instead, the use of panic alarms amid wide-ranging security measures have become standard among politicians, said Ms Leadbeater. “Security and safety is part of this job in a way that it hasn’t been historically, but the normalisation of that is quite scary. The fact that MPs now just accept that as part of the job is quite worrying.”
In addition to the bomb protection equipment for letterboxes mentioned by Ms Black, MPs said some of them wore stab vests when meeting constituents. Risk assessments and security training is offered from the House of Commons security team.
Protective support for MPs began to be ramped up after Cox’s murder, with Operation Bridger established to provide them with extra policing.
A House of Commons spokesperson told i: “In 2021, following the murder of Sir David Amess, the Speaker and the home secretary commissioned a review of security measures for MPs, through which additional measures and security services have been developed, including security for constituency surgeries and security training for Members and their staff.”
Last week, Rishi Sunak suggested that security guards for MPs could also be considered, admitting himself that he has feared for his own safety.
A cyber security expert from a company that works with government departments, meanwhile, told i that discussions on the dark web about MPs are “quite often violent” but any attempt to remove such criminal forums is futile. “It’s the whack-a-mole situation,” said Louise Ferrett, who specialises in threat intelligence at Searchlight Cyber. “Once one site goes down, another one is quickly created”.
Searchlight Cyber provides the tools for governmental agencies and private companies to monitor the dark web, which has become a home for political extremism. “You find quite a few sites that are hosting extremist propaganda material,” said Ferrett. “The two main types that I probably come across the most frequently is either Islamist Isis-style extremism, or far right, neo-Nazi stuff.”
But there are also forums where discussions about UK politicians take place. “It attracts those virulently anti-government, anti-authority characters, or extremists that are not happy with the kind of people that are in power,” she said.
The violence discussed in regards to British MPs, however, “is predominantly fantasy based”. While many activist and hacktivist groups populate the dark web, on the forums it’s mostly “atomised, loner individuals looking for people who share their beliefs”.
Monitoring of dark web activity therefore “can be used to act as an early warning system if there’s a spike in negative sentiment against a particular person”, said Ms Ferrett.
It forms part of a broader counter-terrorism effort, in concert with more traditional policing, as potential danger rises on both the clear web and at street level.
As rape threats and death threats have escalated in recent years – Jess Phillips MP reported having 600 rape threats on social media in one night, the month before Cox’s murder – so too have incidents of vandalism on constituency offices and physical confrontations in the street in recent months. Security concerns have been raised after protesters have been able to get very close to politicians.
In November, Housing Secretary Michael Gove was surrounded by pro-Palestinian campaigners chanting “shame on you” at London’s Victoria Station, as police escorted him away. Only this week, pro-Palestinian campaigners staged a protest outside the home of Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood.
Protests have also come to MPs’ homes. Two of Mr Sunak’s homes have seen protests; his North Yorkshire house was draped in black cloth by Greenpeace activists last summer, and a Just Stop Oil protest outside his London home in November led to multiple arrests.
Ms Leadbeater confirmed to i that she carries several panic alarms. “I think we all do,” she said. MPs, she added, are reluctant to talk about it, however, over fears of drawing further abuse. All have to balance increasing their own protection with the greater public good.
“I wouldn’t consider having security operatives at my surgeries,” Wendy Chamberlain, the MP for North East Fife and chief whip of the Liberal Democrats, told i. Still, the former police officer, who has been involved in efforts to bolster security among MPs, has to weigh up personal safety against her duties.
“I’ve heard of MPs having stab vests and that’s the horrible bit: you’re trying to keep the balance between being close and relevant to your constituents but keeping yourself safe. And in the threat assessment that I’ve done, I don’t feel that that is a level of security that is required for me. But I also accept that you will potentially have particular bad actors – you can never plan for the completely unexpected.”
She describes her use of her panic alarm as “patchy”, adding: “I don’t find it very reliable as a piece of kit. I’m never quite sure if it’s on or not, it beeps at strange times, it seems to run out of power really quickly.” Mr Sheerman agreed, saying of his own panic alarm that “you keep having to recharge it”.
Two years ago, Ms Chamberlain took part in a pilot scheme, offered through the security team in Parliament, which provided situational awareness training to teach MPs how to escape certain environments.
“I wouldn’t want to be in a position where I felt the need to defend myself,” she said, “That’s why I thought the situational training was valuable, because it was actually about thinking, ‘How the hell do I get myself out of this situation as quickly as possible, as opposed to trying to defend myself?’”
But two years on, Ms Chamberlain is unsure whether that pilot scheme was rolled out more widely among MPs, and Mr Sheerman said he hasn’t been offered any such training. The House of Commons press office, however, told i that since the Parliamentary Security Department was established in 2016, “a dedicated Members’ Security Support Service has provided personal security advice to Members and their staff – highlighting the physical, personal and online security measures and guidance available to them. These security measures are available to all MPs across the UK”.
The need for such security forms part of the picture dissuading people from entering politics, she said, and they’re disproportionately women. When attending events for women in politics, potential candidates frequently raise this with her. “It’s maybe less about security, but more about social media and abuse.”
Ms Leadbeater echoes this. “I’ve had loads of people say this to me, particularly young women: ‘Why would I want to go on to be an MP or a councillor when I see what it looks like?’ The bigger point is around how this impacts democracy.”
“There’s huge amounts of research done [showing] female MPs get much more abuse, MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds and LGBTQ MPs,” she said. A 2021 poll by Holyrood magazine found a similar picture in Scotland among MSPs, with 46 per cent of female MSPs having received a death threat, compared to 26 per cent of men.
“The public don’t realise it’s as bad as it is,” Su Moore, CEO of the Jo Cox Foundation, told i. The foundation was established to make politics safer and communities stronger.
Last month, it released a report with 28 recommendations for a range of institutions including political parties, parliament, police and social media companies on how to improve this area of public life. Ms Moore said it’s too early to tell how much their recommendations will be implemented. She added: “It’s a big job. For example, we’re calling for political parties to do a number of things, one of which is to more robustly enforce their codes of conduct.”
There is more work for the police to do too, she said, despite the advances made by Operation Bridger. “There are inconsistencies between police forces, and sometimes a lack of information sharing, which means that it’s not doing its absolute best.”
Anxiety is already growing about what the next few months might bring. Ms Moore said: “We spoke to well over 70 MPs who shared with us their own personal experiences… and a number of them reflected to us how concerned they are about the tone ahead of the next election.”
Ms Leadbeater is one of them. “I feel worried about the potential divisiveness of an election year. I feel worried and nervous about the use of what gets called ‘wedge issues’ and culture wars. I worry that there is going to be much stronger focus on those issues where people tend to have more extreme views.”
The former Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson said last year that the next election will likely be fought by the Conservatives on a “mix of culture wars and trans debate”. Some argue there is already evidence of this.
A less poisonous atmosphere “has to start with the politicians themselves”, said Ms Leadbeater. “And we have to be held to account for our language and for our behaviour. Those MPs that are saying things that are divisive, and sometimes deliberately divisive, need to take a good look in the mirror and think about the role that they’re playing in making things worse for everybody [MPs] — but for society as well.”
Ms Leadbeater wants to focus too on the fundamental causes beneath the threat. “How we can change the culture to make it less toxic, and therefore make sure that nobody feels unsafe at work,” she said. “If you are not building a society where people feel included, engaged, or where people feel they belong, that is when people are vulnerable and are drawn towards extremes.”
At the core of such extremism lies threats to Britain’s democracy and, when enacted, devastation in the lives of those affected. Ms Leadbeater works in her constituency office surrounded by the memories of her sister. She lives with the impact of extremism. And every day she has to decide how to respond.
“Something absolutely horrific happened to me in my life and I am extremely angry about it,” she said. “But you’ve got a choice: you can either give in to anger, you can give into hatred, or you can think, ‘Right, I’m going to try and turn this around into something positive.’”
It never occurred to Ms Leadbeater to become a politician until well after her sister’s death.
“It wasn’t a road that I ever particularly thought I would go down, didn’t particularly want to go down,” she said.
But the words of her sister kept ringing in her ears. “Jo had said to me: ‘Kim, politics needs good people.’ That really stayed with me. She said, ‘if good people don’t step up, then what do you end up with?”