Tuesday should have been the annual MPs v press pancake race for charity. Alas this year, due to the daily hostilities traded on the green outside parliament where it’s held, it was cancelled. The toxic Brexit-induced climate around the Palace of Westminster made it too risky. The speaker John Bercow expressed regret in the House. While most right-minded people abhor the extreme behaviour by some on the fringes, putting MPs and journos back in their boxes is supported by the public. Polling shows increasing faith in the military and royals, but dwindling public trust in politics, MPs and the traditional media. And politics is polarised on a scale unseen before. Brexit has meant that families, political parties, even the cabinet, are split. Three-quarters of Britons surveyed say the UK is divided, rising to 81% among 25- to 34-year-olds.

Social media has had democratising effects. Once, if you wanted to contact an MP or sound off to the press, you’d have to go to the trouble of penning a letter, finding a stamp and envelope, then getting off your arse to post it. Today a bit of typing on your mobile and the hazards of being ignored by your recipient or the filter of editorial control are removed. Now everyone – no matter how extreme – has a platform.

The culture of immediacy also feeds expectations. People feel MPs should be at their beck and call. While it’s great that accessing the corridors of power has been made easier, it has meant our frontline staff are hugely overburdened. The demands of universal credit, rising homelessness and, of course, the intractable impasse of Brexit, generate a huge mass of correspondence. If Tory plans to cut the number of MPs pass – largely affecting Labour, of course – it would only make this much, much worse.

On the same weekend Jeremy Corbyn found himself struck while out and about, I highlighted a tweet from a supporter of Theresa May’s deal telling me to drop my support for a people’s vote and go “back” to Bangladesh or risk being killed in a Brexit-induced civil war. This is the culture in which myself and my overworked staff operate. Sajid Javid hasn’t helped by fostering the idea that anyone with Bangladeshi parentage could have their citizenship stripped if they step out of line. As I responded to my abuser, I have greater familiarity with the Isle of Wight than I do Bangladesh: both are known to me through holidays but the former has been the more frequent destination of the two.

Part of me thinks “sticks and stones”, but then again another internet “admirer” from May 2016 was arrested and interviewed, and received a caution from police. Less than a year ago, a man who sent an Islamophobic package to four MPs’ offices, including mine and Javid’s, was charged with offences including five counts of sending hoax noxious substances, seven counts of malicious comments, plus a count each for soliciting to murder, bomb hoax and a section 46 serious crime act charge of encouraging others.

This is some of the worst behaviour we experience on a daily basis. But three years since Jo Cox’s murder surely the very least we could do is all adopt a tone of greater civility. If not, the degradation of public life will continue apace, and arriving at a peaceful, acceptable solution to the current impasse will be impossible. Part of what the prime minister is banking on is Brexit fatigue, and the understandable public annoyance that MPs haven’t been able to sort the issue growing. I think a people’s vote could solve that, but even then, to hold a referendum responsibly will require a degree of respect between people on all sides of the debate. We must end this toxic environment, or no matter where we end up with Europe, our country will be divided for generations to come.

• Rupa Huq is Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton