Rory Stewart Shares His Experience Of Receiving Abuse As An MP

5 November 2019, 12:19

Lots of the abuse happens online - but it is becoming increasingly aggressive on the streets, said Stewart.

Rory Stewart told Nick Ferrari: "Lots of the abuse is, of course, is largely online or verbal but it is getting quite unpleasant."

He then shared his experience of being at church in London.

He said: "I took my two year old and a four year old to my church in London and I was just taking them to the bathroom at the end of the service and a little old lady came up to me and I thought, oh, it's a nice old lady coming up to me.

"She leaned over to me and she whispered in my ear 'shame on you'. So I was a bit shaken and then I walked outside and I was just crossing the road with the two kids again in my hand and another man turned around and shouted the 'C word' at me.

What I realised is that one of them was the Brexiteer and another one was a Remainer and they both hated me. Because I'm trying to argue for a compromise."

He added: "I mean, I think our language and politics is becoming increasingly violent and aggressive and I'm afraid that can feed through into people being genuinely aggressive.

"So I like most MPs get a lot of tweets and emails saying that I'm a traitor and that I should leave the country and that I'm a... some of them, you know, threatening to hang me and that sort of thing.

Most of that is just chat and most of those people are obviously not intending to string me up from a rope but the problem with this is that it creates an atmosphere where it becomes sort of okay to think about other people."

He then said one of the reasons he is running as an independent for Mayor of London is because he wants to encourage people to think about other people as 'human beings', even if they come from a different political party.

Stewart says people forget that politicians are genuine human beings.