We must do more to protect our MPs

Sir David Amess’s backstory tells you much about his commitment to constituency politics that led to his cruel murder yesterday. He was born and grew up in a terraced house in London’s East End. There was little money. His dad was an electrician, his mother a tea lady and seamstress. In short they were not born into privilege and were exactly the kind of people who might visit an MP’s constituency surgery on a Friday in the hope of having their small catastrophes fixed. Democracy might be crowned with abstractions but it is built on the weekly efforts of our 650 MPs – who hear these struggles face to face and fight for the rights of people who sent them to parliament. On Friday David Amess was martyred to that cause, to which he devoted nearly 40 years of his life.

We are told that the Metropolitan police national counter terrorism directorate is investigating Amess’s brutal and shocking murder and that Islamist extremism is a potential motive.