麻豆社

The word that comes up again and again when people describe David Amess is "kind". The MP for Southend West was murdered at a constituency surgery, and tributes have emphasised how much he loved his job and his seat. He was the sort of MP that many were grateful to have, regardless of their politics, because he lived to serve others.

A committed Christian, Mr Amess was a passionate advocate for animal welfare, for people with disabilities and for the unborn. He also had the gift of a self-deprecating sense of humour. After he was knighted in 2015, he dressed up as an actual knight, complete with armour and horse. It's the sort of cheerful silliness that makes you proud to be British.

It takes the sting out of politics, too. I've been writing about Westminster for a long time now, and while I acknowledge that politics has always been nasty, I do fear that in recent years it has become worse. Disagreement is the lifeforce of democracy, and policies do have consequences that people can feel legitimately angry about. But there's a growing tendency to forget that the vast majority of MPs are trying to do the best thing as they see it. One of the toughest Christian teachings is to try to see God in everyone, and this means the poor and the vulnerable, those who tend to get forgotten - but it also means people in authority, too.

To be an MP is to embrace a life of risk. You put your life on hold to run; even if you win, you could always lose. And the commitment that MPs make to see constituents in person, complete strangers don't forget, is a risk, too. After Jo Cox, a Labour MP, was murdered in 2016, Mr Amess wrote that such attacks had "spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians". While calls to improve security should be considered, I'd hate to live in a democracy where representatives cannot move freely among us. We need to foster a better culture.

If we want good people like Mr Amess to run for office, then we'll have to be kinder in return. This is not special pleading to let the powerful off the hook: I doubt Mr Amess, a backbencher who loved the scrutiny of parliament, would ever endorse that. Rather it is to remember, when we see an MP on TV or Twitter, that they are a human being - a person who, as we've been reminded at such terrible cost, is just as vulnerable as the rest of us.

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