Male Tory MP candidates received the highest percentage of abuse on Twitter during the General Election campaign, new research has shown.

Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan bore the brunt of social media attacks with the quartet receiving more than 50 per cent of the total number of abusive tweets sent to UK politicians in the run up to June 8.

Almost six per cent of messages directed at male Conservative candidates were found to be abusive while about two per cent of mentions involving female Labour candidates were abusive.

Mrs May has ordered a review into the scale of MP intimidation amid concern that social media and divisiveness in politics is fuelling threats and the latest research illustrates just how widespread the problem is.