Leaders from across the political spectrum came together Saturday to pay their respects to a long-serving British lawmaker who was stabbed to death in what police say was a terrorist-related attack by a Muslim. His death has reopened questions about the security of lawmakers as they go about their work.
The slaying Friday of the 69-year-old Conservative member of Parliament David Amess during a regular meeting with local voters has caused shock and anxiety across Britain’s political spectrum, just five years after Labour Party lawmaker Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist in her small-town constituency.
“He was killed doing a job that he loves, serving his own constituents as an elected democratic member and, of course, acts of this are absolutely wrong, and we cannot let that get in the way of our functioning democracy,” British Home Secretary Priti Patel said after she joined others, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to pay tribute to Amess at the church where he died.
Patel said she has convened meetings with the Speaker of the House of Commons, police departments and U.K. security services “to make sure that all measures are being put in place for the security of MPs so that they can carry on with their duties as elected democratic members.”
On Saturday, in an echo of the political unity that emerged after Cox’s murder, Johnson of the Conservatives, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, and the non-partisan speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, arrived at the church where Amess died and laid flowers.
Amess was attacked around midday Friday during his constituency meeting in a church in Leigh-on-Sea, a town 40 miles (62 kilometers) east of London. He suffered multiple stab wounds. Paramedics tried without success to save him. Police have arrested a 25-year-old British Muslim Terrorist for the attack.
The Metropolitan Police has described the attack as terrorism and said its early investigation “revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.” It did not provide details about the basis for that assessment. As part of the investigation, officers were searching two locations in the London area.