‘You should be gunned down’ - Threat to Labour MP over Brexit

Melanie Onn, Labour MP for Great Grimsby. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire.

A Labour MP has been told she risks being “gunned down” for being a “traitor” on Brexit.

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Melanie Onn, the MP for Great Grimsby, quoted messages she had received threatening her because of her views on Brexit.

The message, which comes from a user who only gives the name ‘Helen’, read: “You are a f****** traitor you silly f****** bitch. We will remember your actions you spineless shit. Watch your back or you will not be forgiven. TRAITOR.”

Onn claimed that the same person had sent further emails with further threats.

It said: “The likes of you should be f****** gunned down.”

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She told the Press Association: “Everyone in Grimsby knows I’ve never backed down from a debate, even when I’ve had unpopular POV (including in the referendum), but we must be allowed to have an opinion without this nonsense.”

Onn voted against Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but also recently set out in a blog post why she would not back a second referendum.

Her examples of the shocking communications she had received came as a top Metropolitan Police officer warned about a “creeping rise” in extreme views as a result of Brexit.

It followed the targeting by the far right of Remain MP Anna Soubry, left-wing writer Owen Jones and anti-Brexit campaigner Femi Oluwole.

Labour MP Jo Cox was killed after being repeatedly shot and stabbed in Birstall in June 2016 by Thomas Mair days before the EU referendum vote.

Her killer gave his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” when he appeared in court.

HOPE not hate’s campaigns director, Matthew McGregor, warned that violent extremists are becoming “more extreme and younger”.

He said: “Real resources are needed to counter them. We welcome the fact that police are now taking this threat seriously.

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“There are those in the far right trying to weaponise Brexit, like Stephen Lennon [Tommy Robinson], a radicalised UKIP and an assortment of DIY fascists, but those they appeal to are already angry, already obsessed by anti-Muslim views, and this is just a card the far right are trying to play.”