On 9 July, the body of Ann Widdecombe, an uncompromising, staunchly conservative former UK government minister turned TV personality and spokesperson for the radical-right Reform UK party, was found at her home in south-west England.
Two days later, a man was arrested in South Yorkshire. Believed to be previously unknown to the local police force and thought to have acted alone, he is suspected of driving 270 miles (435km) to the 78-year-old politician’s home and causing her catastrophic blunt-force injuries. Police have been examining whether a leftwing or single-issue cause may lie behind her killing.
Ten years after the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist, five years after a Conservative MP, David Amess, was stabbed to death by a supporter of Islamic State,and as MPs from across the political spectrum report on a tide of abuse and threats, the killing has reignited the UK’s debate on political violence.
Police are examining whether a leftwing or single-issue cause may lie behind the killing of Ann Widdecombe. Photograph: Thomas Krych/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock
Attacks against elected officials across the political spectrum are rising not just in Britain but across the west, with experts saying that ever more dehumanising rhetoric, declining institutional trust and widespread disinformation are combining to create a growing problem.
Five years ago, in 2021, police in the US recorded more than 9,600 threats against members of Congress. The following year, the husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked with a hammer by a rightwing conspiracy theorist.
Also in 2022, a New York gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, was attacked with a sharp object. Two years later, in 2024, Donald Trump faced two assassination attempts, including one in Butler county, Pennsylvania, in which a bullet grazed his ear.
Last year, the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, was firebombed; a gunman dressed as a police officer killed a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and badly wounded another and his wife; and the far-right youth figurehead Charlie Kirk was shot dead.
Josh Shapiro (left) at his firebombed home in Pennsylvania in April 2025. Photograph: Commonwealth Media Services/Reuters
In continental Europe, Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot multiple times by a 71-year-old man while greeting supporters in Handlová, about 90 miles north-east of the capital, Bratislava, in May 2024. He survived after life-saving surgery.
The following month, the Danish prime minister, Mette Fredriksen, was assaulted while walking through a square in central Copenhagen. She suffered minor head, neck and shoulder injuries but said the psychological shock had affected her most.
High-profile leaders are not the only targets. Germany recorded 5,140 politically motivated offences against politicians in 2025, almost double the 2023 figure of 2,790. An MEP, a senator and a far-right Alternative für Deutschland candidate were among the victims.
The same trend is evident in France. An interior ministry unit that monitors attacks on elected officials recorded about 2,500 incidents in 2025 but more than 1,500 in the first five months of 2026 alone, with local mayors accounting for 64% of victims.
Most of the incidents in France (about 65%) involved death threats and verbal abuse. About 10% involve property damage and a similar percentage physical violence: in May, one local mayor needed hospital treatment after an attack over a housing request.
According to the conflict monitoring group Acled, violence and intimidatory acts targeting local officials in particular jumped by 46% across Europe from 2024 to 2025, with the highest proportion of serious incidents recorded in Italy.
Experts have argued that increasingly violent rhetoric that routinely demonises political opponents is clearly a factor: when public figures are framed not just as wrong but as “traitors” or “enemies”, radicalised individuals may feel freer to act.
Security officers move the Slovak PM Robert Fico in a car after he was injured in a shooting in May 2024. Photograph: Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters
In a recent analysis, the academics Andrea Ruggeri, Ursula Daxecker and Neeraj Prasad said violence risked becoming “part of the political process” because of a “toxic mix of elite rhetoric, weakened party structures and spiralling polarisation”.
When leaders “normalise hostility”, influencers “amplify fear” and parties “outsource mobilisation to extremists”, argued the authors, from the universities of Milan and Amsterdam, “political violence ceases to be unthinkable and becomes inevitable”.
Law enforcement officials stress that the structure of political violence is shifting. In the past, the main threat in the US and Europe was from organised extremist groups, they said, while perpetrators were now more likely to be isolated lone actors.
“While jihadist terrorism continues to constitute the most persistent threat, the lines between established terrorist ideologies and other forms of violent extremism are becoming increasingly blurred,” said Europol’s most recent TE-SAT terrorism report.
Modern attackers tend to be radicalised in “nihilistic” digital communities where violence is “gamified” and marked by an “ideological fluidity” that often combines conspiracy theories, anti-system narratives and personal grievance.
Where one ideology is dominant, it produces “single-issue extremism”, typically associated with highly emotive topics such as extreme rightwing xenophobia, anti-state sentiment, anti-vaccination conviction, environmental radicalism or “Incel” beliefs.
But common to many lone actors, Europol says, is a deep-seated hostility towards “the establishment”, state authority and the democratic process – making mayors, MPs and ministers targets not just for their policies but as symbols of the system.
Because these individuals act independently, they do not generate the kind of communications or logistical footprint that security agencies typically intercept, making it hugely difficult for police to detect and prevent attacks on politicians.
Tributes to the Labour MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a far-right extremist in 2016. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
That, in turn, has brought into sharper focus the question of security arrangements for politicians. In the UK, the Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, has been widely accused of exploiting Widdecombe’s death to claim its MPs are not protected enough.
The fact that the radical-right party itself has rarely shied away from the kind of inflammatory rhetoric seen as at least partially responsible for the recent surge in political violence has not escaped Reform’s opponents – but the issue is a live one.
Like most countries, the UK has increased security for politicians in recent years. As in the US and many European countries, senior ministers have security details, but individual members of parliament do not unless they face a specific threat.
The same is true of countries such as France and Germany, both of which have recently established networks linking local police forces to MPs’ constituency offices and increased penalties for acts of violence against elected officials.
The former German justice minister Nancy Faeser described the trend as “an escalation of democratic contempt” that was “increasingly turning into physical violence”, and demanded that perpetrators felt “the full force of the law”.