Racist death threats sent to SNP's Humza Yousaf are sign of sinister trend in politics – Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP

In my political career, I’ve only ever had one death threat.

It came from Lemington Spa (just one individual – not the entire town) but it didn’t feel like something I should take seriously. It was from some crank who could see the work I was doing on the Bill to end smacking in Scotland and this guy just really, really wanted to keep hitting his kids. Up to the point he was willing to suggest that a loud-mouthed children’s rights veteran, in the Scottish Parliament like me, might want to check under his car in the mornings. I laughed it off, but I still told the police. They took it really seriously and handled it with professionalism and sensitivity. It was a bit of a wake-up call.

When you’re in the public eye, it’s inevitable that you will attract the attention of some very angry (and not entirely reasonable) people. It comes with the territory. What should never be part of the territory, is what happened to Humza Yousaf, the SNP Justice Secretary, last week.

Following a speech he made to Parliament about the Black Lives Matter movement, Humza received an email suggesting that he be stripped, placed in a stock and then whipped until unconscious. That he be burned alive with his family and that his remains butchered and exported to Pakistan to be served as pork.

Humza is no stranger to racism but this was on a whole new level and for the first time he actively considered giving up politics.

A hug from a political rival

To see us going at each other hammer and tongs in the chamber, anyone watching the Scottish Parliament would think that Humza and I are hard-bitten enemies. Yet, while we don’t publicise the fact (it wouldn’t do either of us any favours), he and I are good friends.

We once did a five-hour youth work shift in Govan (while I was still in the children’s sector), just after the 2012 Olympics and we’ve been mates ever since. During the 2016 Scottish Election, he came to open my opponent’s HQ next door to my own campaign office and had the grace to stop by afterwards to give me a hug and a clap on the back – much to the surprise of the Nationalist activists next door.

There is a green room culture in Scottish politics. When the cameras are off, most of us tend to leave our animosity at the door. On any given day I might sit in the tea room in parliament with MSPs of any party and shoot the breeze. Most of us will look for the common ground, in those moments, by and large. For those political activists on the fringes however, there is no such bonhomie.

Politicians are public servants

Something has changed in our politics where politicians of a different tribe to you are now fair game for vicious and personal abuse. In recent years, we’ve seen a heavily pregnant Ruth Davidson stalked around town by an angry man shouting abuse at her and filming her with a camera phone.

We’ve seen Jim Murphy screamed at in the face when he tried to speak from his soap box, every day of the independence referendum, and we’ve seen Jo Cox – a popular, first-term Labour MP – stabbed to death in the street outside her constituency office.

Politicians are public servants and a vital part of our democracy. You may not like their point of view but if that’s how you feel then you should defeat their arguments in open ground and then seek out those points on which you agree.

Take Humza and myself. I will never agree with him on independence, I think his tenure as Justice Secretary has been centralising to the point of nanny state but I recognise the calibre of his contributions and the energy he puts into his work. Scottish politics is definitely better with him in it.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is the Lib Dem MSP for Edinburgh Western

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