Nottinghamshire Tory MPs speak out about being victims of 'toxic' tweets and social media posts - 'morons will be morons'

A joint investigation by the publishers of your Chad, the BBC and others, analysed about three million tweets mentioning UK politicians over a six-week period between March and April this year.

More than 130,000, 5 per cent, of those tweets were deemed to be ‘toxic’, according to Perspective API, a machine-learning tool built to identify harmful conversations online.

It defines a toxic comment as a rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment likely to make someone want to leave a conversation.

Coun Ben Bradley, Mansfield MP and Nottinghamshire Council leader, emerged as one of the most abused on Twitter with 13.5 per cent of tweets aimed at him defined as ‘toxic’ or ‘severely toxic’.

Tweets aimed at him have included ‘Shut up you thick f***! #ToryScumOut’ and ‘You absolute lying piece of s***! How has anyone voted for you?’.

The research revealed female MPs were marginally more likely to receive abuse than their male counterparts and MPs who received the largest share of abuse had been outspoken on topics that stirred up strong feelings.

‘Stupid ‘and ‘pathetic’ were the two most commonly used adjectives in toxic tweets.

Female MPs were more likely to be called ‘thick’ and ‘ignorant’ and subject to sexualised language, while their male counterparts were more likely to be called ‘liars’.

Conservative MPs were nearly twice as likely as Labour MPs to receive a tweet classed as ‘severely toxic’ and the think tank Demos has said the level of abuse shown towards politicians was ‘democratically dangerous’.

Coun Bradley said: “It does affect me, in all honesty, as I’ve had some particularly difficult issues with threats made against my family.

“Some tweets I can disregard, where people are just abusive – i.e. just swearing at you or similar – and I can judge those for what they are and ignore them.

“Others, where people have clearly been reading other abuse or false information that is floating around Twitter and have come to a view about your character, are really hard to read.

“I’ve committed my professional life to, in particular, improving policy around supporting the most disadvantaged children.

“When you’ve put years and years of work in to that space, to help people, to read that people have judged you to be nasty or uncaring towards young people or towards disadvantage is really hard.

“They obviously have taken their information solely from negative Twitter commentary, and have no sense of the work or achievements I’ve had in that space over the years, and so the language and the view that they come to is therefore really difficult to get over, when I’m judged to be an awful person by people I’ve never met.

“I often meet people who say that I am much nicer in person than they’d thought I would be, because they read horrible things about me on social media, and again that is difficult to manage.

“I’ve even had members of my extended family message me to tell me I’m wrong about things they’ve read on Twitter, that I haven’t actually said or done. It has a real personal impact.

“I can’t really work out why the wider political conversation in this country – and others – follows Twitter so closely.

“Tweets become news or set a political agenda in a way that I’ve never seen from Facebook, Instagram or TikTok for example.

“The best thing we could do is to stop amplifying the negativity, stop reacting to it as politicians and to set our own agenda instead.

“My experience is that very often things that I’m applauded for by constituents are the things that lead to the most abuse on Twitter.

“It simply doesn’t reflect the real world and the views of most people and we should give it far less credence than we do.”

Sherwood MP Mark Spencer, who served in the cabinet as Chief Whip and Leader of the House under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, confirmed he had been abused online and the severity of the comments had increased to such an extent in recent months that he had been forced to block users both for his own safety and for the mental wellbeing of both himself and his family.

His support for Mr Johnson drew particular anger from some Twitter users with one saying: “You support a liar, therefore I believe you are a liar, not a single spine on your side of the house, corrupt cowards every single one of you, people won’t forget.”

Mr Spencer said: “The fact Conservative MPs were nearly twice as likely as a Labour MP to receive a tweet classed as ‘severely toxic’ is, unfortunately, the case in Westminster, although this is not a surprise to most of my Conservative colleagues.

“From my experience in Government, Conservative members tend to draw more intellectual conclusions to policy problems, and often win more merit in debates because of this.

“However the Left, in being unable to draw such conclusions, are forced to resort to aggressive and toxic rhetoric online. This is simply a matter of intimidation over intellect.

“This culture of toxicity is unfortunately rife within both the Labour Party and its membership.”

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson branded such internet trolls.

He highlighted a “typical message” left on his Facebook page recently, which read ‘Lee Anderson is nothing but a Tory w*** stain on society, hope the c*** gets cancer’.

He said: “It doesn't faze me that much as its usually a Labour supporter or an Ashfield Independent supporter, which means I am doing a good job.

"Morons will always be morons.”