Tribal reasoning is a powerful drug. People are more than capable of switching their policy positions to match their party of choice. They’re also much better at noticing when someone they don’t agree with does it. And in cheering on the “milkshaking” of populist right-wingers, too many progressives are falling into the trap.
Throwing things at politicians has a long history. John Prescott had an egg thrown at him and famously reacted by punching the thrower; we’ve been here before. But progressives have been fretting about eroding political norms for quite a while now, and rightly so. We were appalled by the labelling of judges as enemies of the people for giving a ruling that the Mail didn’t like. We condemned sticking MPs’ faces on the front page of the Telegraph and calling them mutineers. We bemoan the vicious intimidation of MPs like Anna Soubry and Jess Phillips (and we note that it’s highly gendered). We know a healthy political culture requires a recognition that how we do politics matters.
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