The Professor Will See You Now: Scum

The recent report by the Electoral Commission into the 2024 contest makes depressing reading. Some 70 per cent of the election candidates who responded to their survey reported some abuse or harassment; a third of candidates said they were intimidated or deliberately made to feel unsafe at least once during the campaign.

But have you ever wondered about those who dish it out?

The younger the respondents, the more they were in favour of abusing politicians

Fascinating new research looked at public attitudes to abusing politicians. If you are a politician, the good news here is that the public mostly thought it wasn’t acceptable.

Using a standard representative survey, the researchers asked about six different types of abusive behaviour, including sending abusive emails, making physical threats, or daubing slogans on offices or homes.

Measured on a seven-point scale (from “not at all” to “entirely”), on the question of whether it was ever acceptable to visit a politician’s office and threaten them physically, for example, 90 per cent gave a score of zero, the lowest possible.

The most acceptable activity seemed to be sending insulting emails, where 38 per cent gave a score of zero. But even here, once you add in those who gave scores of one or two – that is, also on the not acceptable side of the scale – you reached 78 per cent.

Many of the researchers’ attempts to discover differences in the type of people who were more tolerant of abuse produced null findings. There was relatively little difference between right or left, for example. There was little evidence of polarisation mattering; if anything, centrists were more tolerant of abuse. Women are slightly less abusive than men, although the differences were pretty small – and, for some reason, women think it’s more OK to send an insulting email than men. There were some signs that populists or those with sexist attitudes were more tolerant of abuse but even here the majority were not, and the differences were not massive.

Overall, the authors see the work as something to be upbeat about. They write: “Only small fractions of the British public think that intimidation or aggression against politicians is anything other than completely unacceptable. Sending an insulting email may be understandable, but there is almost universal strong condemnation of the most threatening forms of abuse.”

I’m a little less sanguine. There’s a PG Wodehouse line about the fascination of shooting as a sport depending almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun. And I suspect whether these percentages seem big or small probably depends a lot on whether you are the one likely to be on the receiving end of them.

In percentage terms, large majorities were against abuse; but in absolute terms the minorities are still sizeable. Take the 12 per cent who think that it is OK to send an insulting email; that represents six million people, and enough to make MPs inboxes pretty unpleasant. There may only be two per cent who think it is OK to visit an office and make physical threats, but that’s still more than 1,500 people per constituency.

There was also a clear age gradient. The younger the respondents, the more they were in favour of abusing politicians. The consequences of this will depend on whether this is a generational effect or a life-cycle effect. If the latter, and it’s something young people grow out of, like a belief in fairies or Santa Claus, then it’s no big deal. But if it’s the former, then things are about to get worse. Either way, there’s no indication they’re going to get better.

One wonders if those who dish it out could take it. Alas, I suspect the spoilsports on the university’s ethics committee would look askance at this idea – but imagine if anyone who responded to a survey by saying that it’s OK to send abusive emails to MPs got sent one themselves. “Thanks for taking part in our survey, you dickhead.” Those who think it’s OK to paint abuse on an MP’s home could wake up the next morning to find that someone’s sprayed their garage door with the word “SCUM”. We could see how they like it. 

Further reading: S Shair-Rosenfield et al, Who Tolerates Abuse of MPs, Political Insight (2024)

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