The newly-elected Labour government has been warned that more politicians may lose their lives amid the increasingly tense climate in Britain surrounding the Middle East conflict.
The Government’s independent political violence tsar, Lord Walney, provided the new left-wing government with a dossier of incidents of abuse experienced by candidates during the recent general election.
He told Home Secretary Yvette Cooper that there is a “dark underbelly of extremism” undergirding the political system in the UK while warning that the “aggressive pro-Palestine activists” increase the risk of more assassination attempts in Britain, The Telegraph reports.
“MPs have been murdered while serving their communities. The threat is real and must be confronted or more lives may be lost,” Lord Walney told the Sun on Sunday.
“The abuse captured on camera during this campaign is bad enough, and there is a darker underbelly of extremism that is coordinated and sinister. It must be exposed and stamped out by the new Labour government.”
The warning comes as several high-profile Labour politicians faced abusive treatment on the streets during the campaign from those who felt that they were too soft in their support of the Palestinian cause.
For example, despite publicly breaking with Labour leadership to call for a ceasefire early on in the conflict, Birmingham MP Jess Phillips was shouted down by anti-Israel activists during her victory speech with chants of “shame on you” and “free Palestine”.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Ashworth, who was initially expected to become a member of Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet before being ousted from office by a pro-Gaza independent candidate earlier this month, also reported facing abuse on the campaign trail.
The longtime advocate of multiculturalism said: “The vitriol is like something I have never seen, even though I’ve called for a ceasefire, even though I’ve called for Palestinian statehood.”
“I was chased down the street, shouted at and screamed at for 40, 45 minutes, so I had to seek refuge literally in a vicarage. And they waited for me outside the vicarage… There were leaflets going around, accusing me of being ‘Genocide Jon’.”
The warning to the government came amid the attempted assassination of former U.S. President and current Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The United Kingdom is also no stranger to deadly political violence as well, with Conservative MP Sir David Amess being stabbed to death by an Islamist extremist in 2021. Previously, Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in 2016 by a man with far-right sympathies.
Commenting on the tense political climate in the UK, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — himself a frequent target of leftist political violence — told Sky News on Sunday: “I find it astonishing that members of parliament could walk out across the square and get on the London Underground, I find it astonishing more MPs aren’t attacked. That is how unpleasant so much of the narrative is, it’s become deeply personal.
“If you want people to stand for public office, we’re going to have to protect them properly.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.