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So I am in Finchley in North London. I am not on the Margaret Satcher Walking Tour.

I did that last week, but I could be because I'm standing

outside the constituency office of Mike Freer MP, one of her successors as Conservative

Member of Parliament for Finchley. It is his constituency office as it was hers. In December,

it was subjected to an arson attack, which is part of the reason that Freer announced

this week that he won't be standing again at the next election. That, alongside repeated threats

to his personal safety, has led him to say, enough is enough. And he's not alone. Talk to any MP

and quietly they'll tell you about the threats themselves, their families, their

staff, about the emails they send to the police, the fear they have, about going outside,

of doing what they're supposed to do, be accessible and available to the constituents they serve.

Sometimes I think about the fact that in the 10 years or so since I became a political journalist,

I have been to the sites reported on the murder, the assassination of two MPs.

I will never forget the night I spent in Burstall in West Yorkshire behind the police tape,

the blue lights reflecting off every shop window, one of Joe Cox's high heels left on its side on the cobbles from where she ran for her life.

I will never forget the afternoon in Leon C, the seaside's winter sun shining, standing outside the church where Sir David Amos was stabbed to death, his constituents flocking to the sight in a horrified days. Both were

serving their constituents, just holding surgeries, and in both towns, they told me the same.

Things like that don't happen here. In our town, in our country. We never had much of a history

of political violence in Britain. The shutter down our spines in all the

sound and fury of modern politics is that we're developing one, that things like that do happen

here and will again. So on today's show, a simple question, has our political life become dangerous?

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