Vile online abuse against female MPs ‘needs to be challenged now’

Women in the public eye, especially politicians, are used to brushing off threats of death, rape and horrendous comments about their appearance - will Jo Cox's murder be the wake-up call we need to finally clean up the web?

Less than two weeks ago, Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, was talking about the online abuse she was regularly getting, including death threats. "If I could I would kill you," was just one of them. "Being a female politician, there is no way you are going to avoid abuse. I don't know anyone who has not had to deal with it," she said, adding it could be "frightening and upsetting" and that a group of female MPs had an unofficial support group to deal with it. But at the same time, she also brushed off the effects on her. In an interview with the Sunday Times, she described herself as "a tough middle child" who wouldn't be silenced. Now, the day after the devastating murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, she doesn't sound so sure. "When I spoke about it before, I was one of those who shrugged it off and said I was not as affected by it as other people," she says. "I felt I could handle it and not let it get to me. What I do know is that what happened to Jo has changed the environment."