Mike Freer, a Conservative MP who serves as the justice minister, has announced he is stepping down as an MP at the next general election over fears for his personal safety.
Freer has faced abuse, harassment, intimidation, and a series of death threats from Islamist sympathisers since first being elected in 2010 as the MP for the north London constituency of Finchley and Golders Green, which is home to one of the UK’s largest Jewish communities.
He was also targeted by Islamist fanatic Ali Harbi Ali – the man who went on to stab Southend West MP Sir David Amess to death in 2021 at a constituency surgery for the ‘crime’ of being a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, and supporting air strikes against Islamic State.
Speaking to the Mail, Freer said he suffered his first serious death threat in 2011, a year after Labour MP Stephen Timms was targeted by Roshonara Choudhry. The 21-year-old student stabbed Timms twice at an East London community hall, and later told police she had been inspired by al-Qaida, and wanted to “punish” him for voting for the invasion of Iraq.
A group called Muslims Against Crusades told Freer to “let Stephen Timms be a warning to you” and urged supporters to target him. A dozen supporters of the group then stormed an event he was holding at North Finchley Mosque, with one calling him a “Jewish homosexual pig” who was “defiling the house of Allah”. He was escorted by staff at the mosque to a locked part of the building until police assistance arrived.
The justice minister said the “final straw” was an incident that came last Christmas Eve, when his office was set ablaze in an arson attack that Freer describes as having “melted the phones, melted the computer screens, and caused the ceiling to collapse”. In the aftermath of that attack, Freer received an email describing him as “the kind of person who deserved to be set alight”. Following police advice, the MP now wears a knife-proof vest when attending constituency events.
“There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much,” he said. “Obviously your husband or your family’s views have to carry a lot of weight. And when someone worries that, ‘are you going to come home at night’, you have to take that seriously.”
He went on to say that all MPs now had to accept a certain level of abuse, and that he himself takes “on the chin” all the “routine stuff” – “not just online abuse but someone harassing him in a shopping mall, leaving threatening notes on his car, or mock Molotov cocktails on the office doorstep”.
Asked by The Free Press why he thought he had become a target, Freer responded: “I get abuse for standing up for my constituents on antisemitism and Israel. They also clearly take offense at my views on the Middle East.” Freer is a robust supporter of Israel, and Jews make up around 20% of the voters in his district – a higher proportion than in any other constituency in the country.
The fact that Mr Freer has effectively been intimidated and bullied into not seeking re-election is a timely reminder that the “assassin’s veto” is alive and well in the UK.
In recent years, politicians and other public figures have become a focus of Islamist intimidation and violence over perceived slights and insults to Islam.
Writing for Spiked, Tom Slater notes that among all the other carnage Islamist terrorists have inflicted on society over the past 15 years, they have stabbed one Labour MP, killed one Tory MP and – with the Westminster Bridge attack of 2017 – launched a car-and-knife attack on the Houses of Parliament, killing five people including policeman Keith Palmer.
Then there are the numerous foiled attacks. Khalid Ali, a Taliban solider, was carrying three knives when he was tackled by armed officers near Downing Street in 2017, and later told officers he was there to send a “message” to those in power. A few months later, ISIS supporter Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman was arrested for plotting to bomb his way into Downing Street, kill the guards, and behead Theresa May.
