Have you heard about Katie?” my wife asked as she came home from the school run. Katie is the mum of my little boy’s friends so I assumed the news was about an upcoming children’s birthday party. I assumed wrong. “She wants to be an MP,” my wife continued. “She is hoping to be a candidate at the next general election.” My wife was expecting me to say “That’s so great” — what I actually said was, “She wants to be an MP? Is she mad?”
If you are an MP today you have to deal with abuse, threats of blackmail and violence — and that’s just from Gavin Williamson. Williamson — who looks like Frank Spencer but thinks he’s Al Capone — resigned this week after it was revealed that he told a senior civil servant to “slit your throat” and “jump out of the window”. A BBC investigation this week revealed that more than 3,000 offensive tweets are sent to MPs every day and a box of faeces was left outside a Conservative MP’s office on Monday. It really is crap being an MP these days.
