A few years ago, I met up for dinner with a woman who had just become a member of the House of Commons. She was shaken. Her face blanched.

My acquaintance had just received her first security training. There was a panic device for her to carry at all times, with an SOS button to flag her location. There were maximum-security locks and alarm systems for her home and constituency office. Introductions to the police, who would keep tabs on her whereabouts. Protocols to minimise the risk, and the deadliness, of an attack by one of her constituents should she enter their home to help them. MPs – and in particular female MPs – are warned against meeting any constituent alone.

The risks to MPs are back in the news, following the conviction of a man for harassing the Labour MP Stella Creasy. Creasy was repeatedly targeted by a man as part of an escalating campaign of obsession; his harassment included reporting her to social services on the grounds that her feminism made her an unfit mother.

The story is a perfect storm of the UK’s institutional crises, from the police’s failure in the face of misogyny (the police originally declined to impose criminal........

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