ANDREA JENKYNS
Andrea condemns attacks on activists and vandalism

This afternoon I was shocked to learn that a volunteer for my campaign was abused, attacked and chased with a sledgehammer when leafleting. This follows a campaign of vandalism in which almost all my posters in the constituency have been sprayed on. One even had a hole on my face as someone punched it. Since Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party, politics has become so much bitter. When I was elected in 2015, I and Ed Balls conducted a very grown-up and mature campaign, despite disagreeing on policies. In 2017 things started to change, with a rise in vandalism and harassment. The nasty rhetoric by Momentum is showing how blinded by ideology and desperate they are, causing also valid labour MPs to retire or change party. This rhetoric is fuelling up reckless acts by troublemakers, as they feel a moral sense of entitlement in their crusade against tories, identified as an enemy to crush and not as contestants with different ideas.