Government reshuffles have ended plenty of political careers, but it’s not often that they save a life.
Mike Freer believes he is the exception. When Downing Street told him on the evening of September 16, 2021, that Boris Johnson was moving him from the whips’ office, he cancelled plans for a surgery in his Finchley and Golders Green constituency the following day and stayed in Westminster.
The switch meant that while terrorist fanatic Ali Harbi Ali was lurking outside his north London constituency office, apparently waiting for him with a knife, Mr Freer was nine miles away in Whitehall preparing to take up a new role as equalities minister – a dream job for the openly gay MP.
One month later, Ali murdered fellow Tory MP Sir David Amess in a frenzied knife attack at his constituency office in Southend.
‘Not many people can say Boris saved their life,’ Mr Freer says with a thin smile.
But the incident was no joke. In fact, it changed his life and was the trigger for his decision yesterday to walk away from front-line politics.
As an outspoken supporter of Israel, and MP for one of the most heavily Jewish constituencies in the country, Mr Freer was used to intimidation, abuse and even death threats
When Boris Johnson was moving him from the whips office, he cancelled plans for a surgery in his Finchley and Golders Green constituency the following day and stayed in Westminster while a terrorist fanatic was apparently lurking outside his north London constituency office with a knife. Pictured: Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Mr Freer visit the Jewish Care campus, Golders Green
Pictured: Ali Harbi Ali, left, and his later victim, Conservative MP Sir David Amess
Mr Freer and his husband’s nerves faced a further shredding in December when his constituency office was subjected to a serious ‘arson’ attack
As an outspoken supporter of Israel, and MP for one of the most heavily Jewish constituencies in the country, Mr Freer was used to intimidation, abuse and even death threats.
A decade earlier, the organisation Muslims Against Crusades urged its supporters to target him. Referencing the stabbing of Labour MP Stephen Timms by an Al Qaeda supporter, the group posted a picture of Mr Freer online with the message ‘let Stephen Timms be a warning to you’.
When members of the group burst into an event he was holding in a mosque, one said he was a ‘Jewish homosexual pig defiling the house of Allah’. ‘I’m not Jewish, and I’m not a pig,’ he observes drily as he discusses the ‘unsophisticated threat’.
Many more incidents were to follow in the coming years, including numerous threats, abusive notes left on his car and mock petrol bombs placed on the steps of his constituency office.
But it was the near miss with Ali which set off the chain of events that led him to decide to quit politics.
‘Who knows what would have happened?’ he says.
Following a ‘heavy security review’ with the police, his location is now monitored and he was advised to wear a stab vest when making scheduled appearances in his constituency, such as holding surgeries in supermarkets.
Police have advised him to be careful where he parks his car. Nowadays he takes a step back if he is stopped by a constituent in the street. His husband, Angelo, became ‘incredibly jittery’ about his safety after the incident, to the point where he insists on picking him up from the Tube station rather than letting him walk home.
Mr Freer said: ‘You shouldn’t really have to think: Am I going to survive the day?’
A decade earlier, the organisation Muslims Against Crusades urged its supporters to target Mr Freer
Many more incidents were to follow in the coming years, including numerous threats, abusive notes left on his car and mock petrol bombs placed on the steps of his constituency office. Pictured: A burnt out window at the rear of Conservative MP Mike Freer’s office
Following a ‘heavy security review’ with the police his location is now monitored and he was advised to wear a stab vest when making scheduled appearances in his constituency, such as holding surgeries in local supermarkets
The couple’s nerves faced a further shredding in December when Mr Freer’s constituency office was subjected to a serious arson attack.
Two suspects have been charged with the incident, which Mr Freer believes was motivated by his views, and which he now says was the ‘final straw’ in his domestic debate about whether to stay in politics.
Last year he told his association that he would stand at the next election, and polls suggest his seat could survive as an island of blue in the red sea of Labour London. But at home, his family’s ‘jitters’ had gone into overdrive in the wake of the arson attack, leading to a series of ‘tense’ conversations over Christmas.
‘It was a tough decision – it’s taken a long time to come to it,’ he says. ‘I’ve oscillated between thinking I’m not going to quit, I’m going to carry on and thinking, no, I can’t do this without my husband by my side.
‘It’s not his fault, by the way – he’s always said, ‘look, I’ll support your decision’. And he’s seen for himself the level of support and warmth taken from the Jewish community. But I know he worries and he frets when I’m on the Tube. And that’s quite a burden you know, when you’re putting that stress on your family, on your partner.’
Quitting politics in an area where he has served for 34 years, first as a councillor and since 2010 as an MP, is ‘a wrench’. But he adds: ‘When someone worries that, ‘are you going to come home at night’ – you have to take that seriously.’ Mr Freer says the rise of social media has intensified the abuse faced by MPs. ‘Social media has an awful lot to answer for,’ he says.
Not that he’s used Twitter for the past six years after a supporter of former Labour MP George Galloway sent him a picture of Mr Freer mocked up as a concentration camp victim following an online spat.
Last year he told his association that he would stand at the next election, and polls suggest his seat could survive as an island of blue in the red sea of Labour London. Pictured: With then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2015
His husband Angelo became ‘incredibly jittery’ about his safety after the incident, to the point where he insists on picking him up from the Tube station rather than letting him walk home. Pictured: Mike Freer after winning the Finchley & Golders Green constituency in 2019
Quitting politics in an area where he has served for 34 years, first as a councillor and since 2010 as an MP, is ‘a wrench’. Pictured: Rishi Sunak laughs at a joke as he talks with pupils at Wren Academy in Finchley, north London, on December 14
Jeremy Corbyn also comes in for criticism for allowing a climate of anti-Semitism to build during his years as Labour leader. ‘Before Corbyn, people realised anti-Semitism wasn’t acceptable. It was never going away, but it was contained. And then under Corbyn the floodgates opened and we’ve never been able to push that back.’
Mr Freer is an outspoken supporter of Israel and his local Jewish community – so much so that he is often mistaken for being Jewish.
‘I’ll sit in the [Commons] tea room having a bacon sandwich and people will say, ‘you can’t eat that, you’re Jewish’,’ he says.
He is convinced that his stance on the issue has been a driving factor in the years of abuse and threats he has suffered, despite the fact he is not slavishly uncritical towards the Israeli government.
‘I’m a strong supporter of the two-state solution,’ he says. ‘I’m not completely Israel, come hell or high water. But, yes, I do support the Israeli government on the eradication of Hamas, very firmly and very robustly.’
Mr Freer is also angry at the anti-Semitism faced by many of his constituents, particularly in the wake of the October 7 attacks on Israel by terror group Hamas.
‘I know of no other schools that need security other than Jewish schools,’ he says. ‘I don’t know places of worship that need security. I don’t know shops – shops might have security for shoplifting, but not to stop their shoppers being attacked.’
He does not know what he will do after the election. ‘Maybe I’ll drive an Uber,’ he quips. Despite the abuse, he says being an MP for an area he loves has been ‘an amazing job’.
‘It’s a job I enjoy – it gets under your skin,’ he says.
‘It’s a real emotional wrench to give up, not just being an MP but actually the seat – Finchley and Golders Green has been my home.’
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