Angela Rayner warns of 'silent majority' being radicalised online after Australian MP attack

Angela Rayner has warned a "silent majority" are being radicalised online after the horrific attack on an Australian MP. The Communities Secretary was asked about Dr Helen Haines, who lost a leg after being allegedly rammed twice by a vehicle outside her office in rural Victoria. Ms Rayner told Sky News intimidation was driving people out of politics, and that the algorithms were fuelling hate online. She said: “Many Prime Ministers and international people have spoken about this, in this context of violence, which I think undermines our democracy. To see more of the stories you love from The Mirror and to find them easily in Google then make us your preferred source. Free and easy-to-do, just click on the link here to find more from The Mirror at the top of your feed. “I've mentioned in many interviews that I might disagree with what the leader of the opposition in the Conservatives says, or the leader of Reform, or the leader of the Greens. It is completely unacceptable to intimidate people and to threaten them. These are democratically elected individuals, whether we like it or not. “I've been in parliament since 2015 — I saw Mhairi Black, I saw Anna Soubry, these were strong women that have said, ‘You know what? It was too much. The threats were too much,’ and they pulled back from public life. “Therefore, we're all losing out when that happens. Even one of my colleagues, luckily enough the police were informed about a plot to murder her, and thankfully that didn't happen, Rosie Cooper, there is a documentary made about it. This is just in my time in parliament, in the decade that I've been, two of my colleagues have been murdered.” Ms Rayner said she had panic buttons at her house, had suffered threats against her children, but that 99.9% of the public were “good and decent”. Warning the “online space is radicalising a lot of this”, she said: “A lot of it what is said to me is in communications electronically or online, they wouldn't say it to my face, and I don't feel that they come at me in person. But I really feel there's an issue around the radicalisation, and the violence, and the imagery that is projected on a lot of online platforms. “The government is taking action on that, but I really feel that we have to push back, because that is not the experience or what the British people are about. “It's this silent majority that are radicalised, that are angry, that are driven to the algorithms to see more of the hate that is, I think, fuelling a lot of this. It's not just against politicians, but actually you can see people who go online, if they put something in a forum, then there's this like pile-on. People are starting to withdraw because they don't want to express their views because they get attacked for it.”