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A Labour candidate has received a chilling essay from someone detailing how they want to kill her.

Ruth Smeeth, the Labour parliamentary candidate for Stoke-on-Trent North, said she's been left scared to leave her home due to constant threats.

She's unable to leave her house alone and says both her office and home have been turned into "fortresses" after being bombarded with death threats.

Ms Smeeth also has to carry a panic button in case she's attacked.

Speaking about the "terrifying" messages, Ms Smeeth said she decided to speak out after a death threat was hand-delivered to her constituency office last week.

Staffordshire Police are investigating the latest threat, StrokeonTrentLive reports.

Speaking to StokeonTrentLive, Ms Smeeth said: “Something horrible is happening. There is a General Election on and it will only get worse.

"I’m not asking for sympathy, I just feel like I need to put down a marker to say this is not normal and it is not acceptable.

“I won’t be bullied by anyone. We need to find a way back to respectfully disagreeing with each other, not threatening to hurt each other.”

Ms Smeeth says the threats have come from the far-left and the far-right and almost half have been anti-Semitic.

The politician, who has been the Stroke-on-Trent MP since 2015, received her first death threat in 2014 and it hasn't stopped since then.

Threats had come via social media and emails until the chilling incident last week.

“Broadly speaking, none of the tangible threats have been from this area before, but I assume the one on Thursday was,” she said.

“What made me think is that me and my team just treated it as something normal. The stuff that might have shocked us four years ago is now normal. The stuff that shocks us now is absolutely terrifying.

“The police did a risk assessment and said I was in the top 10 MPs that could be targeted. I think it’s because I’m Jewish, and because I’m a woman. This is all in the shadow of my friend (Labour MP Jo Cox) being murdered. Things seem to have got worse since then."

In 2016, Ms Smeeth was forced to move out of her London home because police did not believe she could be kept safe there, and security measures at her home in Stoke-on-Trent have been continually ramped up since then.

“For the past 18 months or so I have not been allowed on public transport by myself – I can’t go to London on the train without a colleague or one of my team.

"You won’t ever see me at a public engagement by myself and my surgeries have to be appointment only. When I am knocking on doors someone needs to be with me. Someone would have to meet me if I wanted to go for a walk.

“My house is a fortress, my office is a fortress. I’ve got panic buttons in my house, I carry one in my pocket. I have to live in an environment that no-one should have to live in.

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“The only way for me to live with that is to start treating it like it’s normal, but it isn’t normal.”

Ms Smeeth says she can't say in total how many threats she's as her team often hand them straight to the police to protect her.

“My team, my friends and my family all have to deal with this,” she said. “For my mental health I don’t look at them.

“It started off as abuse. When they realised that wasn’t going to change my actions or behaviour that seemed to wind them up even more.

“I’ve had times when I have been scared. I will have a wobble when something has been so graphic or overwhelming that I have wanted to hide.

“Someone wrote an essay on how they wanted to kill me – I wouldn’t be human if that didn’t make me think, ‘What am I doing?’ But then I will go to a community event or a school and I remember how lucky and privileged I am to do this job.

“I’m speaking about this because I need to help fix it, so that other women, young women, won’t be put off politics.

“It has been a privilege to represent the Potteries and no sad, pathetic person is going to bully me or silence me.”

(Image: Jo Cox Foundation/PA)

A Staffordshire Police spokesman said: "Officers are investigating a report of a malicious communication being sent to a local MP last Thursday.

"As with every election the police’s role is to prevent and detect crime and enable the democratic process to take place unhindered.

"We take that role very seriously because intimidation of candidates and their supporters has serious implications for individuals and democracy. All candidates have been offered guidance and sensible advice."

A West Midlands Labour Party spokesman said: “No-one in any walk of life should face abuse or threats, it is completely wrong and should always be called out.

"Two years ago, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in the street by a far-right terrorist so we take any threat to MPs extremely seriously.”