In response to Harry Smith: My doubts over ‘death threats’ to Grieve,

Robin Horbury wrote:

The death threat ploy was also used by Nicky Morgan back in April – as was detailed in the TCW blog by David Keighley in the blog about the BBC yesterday.  The Today programme swallowed her claim whole, and then went on to treat Bill Cash as if he was a reckless warmonger.

Groan wrote:

Threats of death and all sorts are common in many walks of ‘public’ life. As I’m sure many local councillors can cite. Unsurprisingly working in mental health has brought a number of such threats my way over the years. I doubt very much there are many MPs who haven’t such too. It certainly can be worrying and the advent of email then social media made them more frequent. Perhaps one becomes too blase, because occasionally the threats are ‘real’. But I simply don’t believe anyone who has been in ‘public’ life for any time has not built a resistance to the many forms of abuse that unfortunately comes with the territory. In the recent ‘investigation’ of online abuse Boris was the top of the list in terms of volume and Tory men dominated the top 20.

I always assume that any MP highlighting such things is doing so to grab a headline rather than is particularly worried.