'It was so vindictive and nasty': Paula Sheriff speaks out on violent abuse she faced as MP

Ms Sherriff was sent thousands of violent messages referencing her weight, telling her she 'should be shot' and explicit rape and death threats.

The former Labour MP for Dewsbury confronted Boris Johnson on his 'divisive' language in October 2019, who dismissed her safety concerns amid Brexit as "humbug".

But Ms Sherriff says the backlash to this showdown was just one of many examples of the abuse she and other MPs faced daily.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post as part of the Call It Out campaign, she said: "Prior to that event we had received a huge amount of abusive comments from constituents and further afield, we’re talking hundreds a week.

"They were threatening, misogynistic, really deeply unpleasant and abusive.

"I hadn’t planned to challenge the Prime Minister, but throughout the day he had used these trigger words which I could see were being reflected in the social media posts and emails we were receiving accusing us of being traitors.

"Within minutes, it went absolutely crazy on social media and overnight there were hundreds if not thousands of emails and Facebook messages.

"Some of it was supportive, but the abuse was absolutely abhorrent.”

Ms Sherriff, who lost her Dewsbury seat in the December election, has called for clearer legislation to be able to charge more perpetrators of online abuse.

She added: “Sadly in the life of an MP we’re reasonably used to it. But this was hideous, not just for me but for my team.

“You might say, ‘it’s just social media, you can laugh it off’. But this was continuous and of course it affected me.”

Following the tragic murder of Batley MP Jo Cox in 2016, Ms Sherriff introduced several measures to protect her safety.

She stopped making constituency visits on her own, made sure that her office staff always went out in pairs and all meetings with constituents were made by appointment only.

Ms Sherriff said: “Sadly, abuse became the norm. We would go into Westminster and sit in the tea room and talk about how many death threats we’d had that weekend and how many times we’d had to ring police.

"What we always noticed in Westminster was that it was so disproportionate towards women.

"The men did get abuse, but their abuse was a different sort. It didn’t have that personal element, it was more about politics. Ours was just so vindictive and nasty.”

Ms Sherriff has reported several violent threats to the police, but called for tougher action against the perpetrators of online abuse.

She is concerned that a hostile environment online will prevent women going into politics or other public-facing roles.

Ms Sherriff said: “As a society, we need to do more about this. It’s not just women in politics, it’s journalism, it’s law, it’s high-profile industries.

“Jo was killed because of her beliefs and there was the sense in Westminster that there could be further attacks, that other people could be hurt or sadly lose their lives.

“We need to send out a much stronger message against abuse of any nature, because there isn’t much deterrent. These keyboard warriors think they can get away with it.

“We need to look at the different ways we can tackle this because it's making people’s lives a misery - and I can speak from personal experience on that.”

The Yorkshire Evening Post's Call It Out campaign is sharing real life experiences of abusive online behaviour and asking our readers to help play their part in reporting it to account admins, social media platforms and, where needed, the police.

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