In a country of centralised power, he did all he could to make himself a man of Southend rather than simply Westminster
British politics rightly commemorates its own. David Amess, killed in his home constituency last week, was eulogised on Monday in the Commons and St Margaret’s church, Westminster, as what the prime minister called “one of the kindest, nicest, most gentle people in politics”. He was not a star of the parliamentary firmament, but rather that paragon: a “good constituency MP”. The solemn minute’s silence held in the House of Commons and the tributes to Amess from MPs testified to a profession under collective threat. It is one that lies at the heart of representational democracy: that of intermediary between the rulers and the ruled.
Amess’s death comes at what many see as a critical juncture in democracy’s theatre of public debate. MPs are exposed to criticism and attack as never before, thanks in large part to the glaringly inadequate regulation of social media. Male and female MPs, particularly female ones, are being subjected to appalling anonymous trolling. An Amnesty survey in the run-up to the 2017 general election found the MP Diane Abbott was in receipt of an average of 51 abusive tweets a day. Her colleague Jess Phillips has to keep in constant touch with the police. The atmosphere in which an MP must work is thus increasingly poisonous, with no effective action taken by either Facebook or Twitter.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
