Like many others, I took a break from social media over the Christmas holidays. With that, it made me think about how we interact with public figures online, and the number of women MPs who chose to stand down at the last election because of the abuse they’ve received.

Since being elected as an MEP last May, I’ve had a fairly rude awakening about the drawbacks of having a higher profile. When my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I first took up our seats in July, wearing those familiar yellow t-shirts with the slogan “Bollocks to Brexit” on them, we all tweeted photos. I received a disproportionate volume of negative responses, most of them calling me a “c***”. The mildly less offensive but nonetheless sexist comments