Before the 30-year-old MP Zarah Sultana walks into any public meeting, she pauses to record her location and the time. It’s a security precaution taken on police advice in case she is attacked, and one that too many British politicians living with death threats will recognise. Like the panic buttons by their beds or instructions to vary the route by which they take the kids to school, it’s part of the grim price paid for being in public life. But amid escalating tensions over the Israel-Gaza war, it’s Sultana, as a Muslim woman passionately advocating for a ceasefire, who has emerged as a particular lightning rod for abuse.
Having recently been told she is now the most heavily targeted MP of all those monitored, earlier this week she matter-of-factly read out some of the more broadcastable messages she receives, for Sky TV’s cameras. “Send that bitch to Palestine, they’re low on targets,” was one.
Later, Sultana sat beside her friend Diane Abbott as parliament discussed the Tory donor Frank Hester’s reported view that Abbott made “you want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”, while the prime minister squirmed and refused to commit to returning Hester’s money. Almost surreally, the speaker’s failure to let Abbott intervene on the subject of her own safety left three men arguing about a woman instead of actually listening to her.
There is something both fearful and exhausted about this fag-end parliament, seemingly powerless to defend itself against an uncontrollable torrent of hate spewing from all quarters – not just from right or left but also from assorted racists, misogynists, homophobes and wild-eyed conspiracy theorists convinced that council traffic-calming measures are the beginning of a plot to install a global dictator – against politicians of all parties and factions. It’s not just frightening but exhausting, driving good people away from public engagement on difficult subjects and sometimes out of politics altogether.
There was genuine cross-party sympathy recently for the Tory MP Mike Freer, who is planning to stand down after years of appalling threats against himself and his husband became “too much”, and again for Abbott this week, precisely because everyone in parliament knows it could be them tomorrow, if it isn’t already them today. Yet somehow Michael Gove’s plans to tackle the dangerous tensions emerging in the wake of the 7 October attacks – which have seen a surge in reported incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism against members of the public as well as increased threats to MPs – have still managed to turn a brief flicker of unity to ashes.
Three former Conservative home secretaries had already taken the highly unusual step of warning the communities secretary against politicising an incredibly sensitive issue even before he published proposals to deny government funding or ministerial meetings to any organisation promoting “violence, hatred or intolerance” in ways that undermine democracy but fall short of being illegal.
Though the blacklist will now be finalised by politically neutral civil servants, not ministers, Gove confirmed it would consider groups ranging from the Muslim Association of Britain – currently backing a campaign to unseat Labour MPs in protest over Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza – to groups such as Patriotic Alternative, which he accused of promoting neo-Nazi ideology, arguing for a white ethnostate and targeting minority groups for intimidation. Since neither is exactly likely to be invited into Whitehall for tea and biscuits any time soon, this looks suspiciously like a political sledgehammer to crack an empty nutshell. Yet it’s still a sledgehammer so carelessly targeted that it had former Tory home office ministers queueing up alongside Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway to question the implications for free speech, free association and potential unintended targets such as gender-critical activists.
The test of a successful anti-extremism plan should be that ultimately someone like Zarah Sultana can make the peaceful case for a ceasefire without ending up in fear of her life, and just as importantly, others in public life should also be able to argue or vote against one without needing police protection. In a healthy democracy, people should be able to differ on emotive issues without their opponents wishing them dead. But Gove’s plan is now faltering at an even more basic hurdle, which is Rishi Sunak’s reluctance to take a hard line on reportedly incendiary utterances by his own party’s donors.
Would the Tories now be returning Hester’s £10m, the SNP’s Alison Thewliss asked Gove in parliament. What about Sir Paul Marshall, Labour’s Andy Slaughter wanted to know, who has donated to Gove in the past and was recently caught “liking” a tweet predicting that it was a “matter of time before civil war starts in Europe” and others calling for mass expulsions of immigrants, supposedly to preserve civilisation? Gove silkily ducked the first question and in response to the second, irritably defended Marshall’s record on educational philanthropy. Yet questions like these are not going to go away.
The instinct either to blame the other side for inciting hatred or belittle its genuine fears of intimidation, while bending over backwards to excuse dangerous rhetoric in your own ranks, remains the biggest obstacle to political parties uniting against what they all surely now recognise as a common threat. The chances of putting such tribalism aside in the dying stages of a parliament seem admittedly very small. What was striking, however, is that many of the toughest questions for Gove on Thursday came from the Conservative benches. If parliament cannot unite around a fair and effective plan for defusing tensions ahead of what promises to be a frighteningly bitter general election, perhaps it can still unite in rejecting a bad one.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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