Parliament in recess, the height of summer and a constituency by the sea – Brighton. Everything was in place for a relatively relaxing week to catch up on correspondence. But life doesn’t always work out the way you’d planned. The reaction to my initiative for a cross-party group of women to work together, on a temporary, short-term basis – simply and only to try to broker a process to avoid a dangerous crash-out Brexit and put in place a route to a People’s Vote – was immediate and largely hostile.
Media coverage quickly brushed aside the fact that my suggestion of an “emergency cabinet” was in inverted commas, and never meant to be taken literally. The proposal wasn’t born from me sitting at home dreaming up some sort of fantasy cabinet – it came from a place of real fear about what will happen if this government gets away with its reckless gamble with our futures. I made mistakes, for which I apologised. But the online abuse was a bruising reminder of how vitriolic our politics has become in the Brexit era.
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