Incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has called for a “serious review” of MPs’ security following the death of Ann Widdecombe. Police said the Reform UK spokesperson and former Conservative MP died in a “targeted attack” in her home in Devon on 8 July but are still working to find a motive. A 28-year-old white British man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and a terrorism offence. “Politics has darkened in the last decade,” said Burnham, and protections for politicians may need to be “increased further”.
‘More dangerous than ever’
It is an “unfortunate statistical fact” that MPs are now “more likely to meet a violent death” than a member of the Armed Forces or police, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin told the Commons on Monday. Others recalled the murders of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 and Conservative David Amess in 2021.
Reform UK has said its MPs are particularly at risk, pointing to 1,577 recorded threats against leader Nigel Farage since February, including 597 death threats, predominantly on X. Many MPs blamed social media for “contributing to an atmosphere where violent language and abuse had been normalised”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason. They said “it felt more dangerous than ever”. The death of Widdecombe highlights the “breadth of the challenge the authorities face in assessing the threat to those in public life”.
‘Increasingly perilous time’
There has already been a significant expansion of security measures for MPs in the decade since Cox’s murder. Personal protection has improved, while “security is visibly tight in Westminster, with armed police patrolling the parliamentary estate”, said The Guardian’s Alexandra Topping. But this has done little if anything to stop the scale of threats against MPs, having the knock-on effect of discouraging people, “particularly women and people of colour, from entering politics in the first place”.
In this “increasingly perilous time, criteria for granting protection to politicians, inside and outside parliament, must be more flexible”, said The Times. This will in all likelihood mean “more bodyguards, more cameras”, all of which cost money. “But if that is the price of democracy, then so be it.”
This article first appeared in The Week’s Politics Unspun newsletter.
Reform says its MPs are particularly at risk, pointing to 1,577 recorded threats against leader Nigel Farage since February
