Sir David Amess MP

Sir David Amess MP was killed at his constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex this afternoon.

This appallingly horrific tragedy is so desperately sad and senseless beyond words.

Sir David Amess first became an MP for the Conservative Party in my home town of Basildon in the June 1983 general election. I still have a vague recollection of my immense disappointment to put it mildly at not only having a Conservative Party MP elected for Basildon but also the re-election of a Conservative Government with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister.

I have never voted for the Conservative Party and I never will. Their values, beliefs and policies are diametrically opposed to my own long-held progressive, internationalist and environmental views. 

Sir David Amess was a committed Thatcherite in terms of economic and social policy and more recently a committed Brexiteer. His social conservatism bordered on the illiberal e.g. his anti-abortion views and his support for the death penalty. I did not and could not subscribe to any of that.

Nonetheless, Sir David Amess was also deeply committed to causes that I do firmly support, not least animal welfare and the abolition of hunting wild animals for so-called "sport".

However, the appalling event today when a man was killed just doing his job as an elected representative in our open, albeit flawed, democracy has nothing at all to do with politics or anyone's political views.

It is a human tragedy and regretfully yet another demonstration of where disrespect for other people, discrimination, bigotry and hate can ultimately lead. Surely, as a society, we can be and must be better than this?

The death of Sir David Amess reminded me so much of the murder of the wonderful Jo Cox MP on the eve of the EU referendum in June 2016.

Both of them were thoroughly decent human beings who were brutally killed for no reason whatsoever. The only difference is that Jo Cox was a left wing secular humanist killed by a white British nationalist/supremacist whilst Sir David Amess was a right wing Catholic killed by an assumed Islamist extremist. This serves to exemplify the threat to our fragile democracy from the increasing threat of politically motivated violence.

I have always had an interest in politics and I regularly watch important Parliamentary debates and Prime Minister’s Questions on TV.

Sir David Amess had always struck me as decent, polite, respectful, humourous and non-tribal politician and unfortunately there are far too few like that in Parliament across all political parties.

As an MP for Basildon and then Southend West, it is also abundantly clear that Sir David Amess was first and foremost a community champion (I experienced this in Basildon) who genuinely represented his constituency and constituents from the back benches in Parliament. He deserves great credit and recognition for that, not for him the self-serving ambition, personal advancement and celebrity of becoming a Government Minister or Shadow Minister. His priority always seemed to be the people of the area that he represented whether they voted for him or not.

I am sure that Sir David Amess will be greatly missed by his constituents and his Parliamentary colleagues across all the political divides.

Above all, I offer my sincere condolences to his wife and children on the sudden and devastating loss that they have suffered. Their lives will have been changed for ever.

The death of Sir David Amess quickly follows the sad and early death from cancer of James Brokenshire, another Conservative Party MP who I did not have much in common with politically but who I also very much liked and respected.

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