A Labour politician has apologised for an “insensitive” social media post about a Tory MP quitting Parliament due to concerns about personal safety.
Mike Freer, who represents Finchley and Golders Green, yesterday announced he will stand down at the next general election after a series of death threats and an arson attack on his constituency office.
Reacting to his letter, London Assembly member and councillor Anne Clarke said you “just need” Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers “for the hat trick of Barnet Tory MPs”.
But Ms Clarke was forced to swiftly delete the post on social media platform X and apologise.
She said: “Last night I tweeted an insensitive post without having properly read the letter I was referring to.
“I would never intentionally seek to cause division and upset over such a serious issue as an elected official’s personal safety.
“Even when you’ve been in politics a long time, it’s still possible to make mistakes and it was a huge error on my part not to fully read the letter before passing comment.
“I offer my apologies to anyone who was upset by my original post, which I deleted almost straight away. I’ve also made a private apology to Mike Freer.”
Mr Freer said that “by the skin of my teeth I avoided being murdered” by Ali Harbi Ali, who went on to kill Southend West MP Sir David Amess during a constituency surgery in 2021.
The justice minister said he had also received threats from the group Muslims Against Crusades “about coming to stab me” and found “mock Molotov cocktails on the office steps”.
He added that an arson attack on his north London constituency office in December was “the final straw”.
Mr Freer told the Daily Mail: “There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much.”
In a letter to his local Conservative association, Mr Freer wrote that it “will be an enormous wrench to step down”, but that the attacks “have weighed heavily on me and my husband, Angelo”.
