The appointment of an ex-justice secretary to lead a review into the murder of a Member of Parliament is not a solution. It is a sedative. It is the political equivalent of putting a fresh coat of paint on a building with a cracked foundation.
Whenever a tragedy of this magnitude strikes the heart of Westminster, the machinery of government grinds into a predictable, performative gear. They call for a "thorough review." They select a safe pair of hands—usually a former minister or a retired judge—to oversee it. They promise "lessons will be learned."
But the lessons are never learned because the premise of the review is flawed from the start. We are treating a systemic, cultural collapse as a localized security failure. We are trying to fix a flood by reorganizing the towels.
The Myth of the Perimeter
The "lazy consensus" surrounding these reviews focuses almost entirely on physical security. The papers will debate whether MPs should have bodyguards, whether surgery locations should be kept secret, and whether we need more metal detectors at community centers.
This is a distraction.
I have spent years watching how government departments handle risk assessment. The impulse is always to build a wall. But in a representative democracy, a wall is a tomb. The moment an MP becomes inaccessible to their constituents, they cease to function in their primary role. You cannot secure a person whose entire job description requires them to be an easy target.
If you provide every MP with a Close Protection unit, you haven't saved democracy; you've turned it into a high-security prison. The cost isn't just financial—though the millions required to kit out 650 representatives with full-time security would be staggering—it is the fundamental erosion of the "unmediated" relationship between the governor and the governed.
The Judicial Review as a Political Shield
Why choose an ex-justice secretary? Because they understand the "process."
In the world of high-level bureaucracy, process is the enemy of progress. A judicial or semi-judicial review is designed to look backward. It combs through police records, intelligence briefings, and mental health reports to find the one "missed opportunity" that could have stopped the attacker.
This is hindsight bias masquerading as expertise. By focusing on the specific failure of a single case, the review avoids addressing the broader, uglier reality: the radicalization of the public discourse.
We don't have a security problem. We have an incentive problem.
Our current political and media ecosystem rewards the most extreme, vitriolic interpretations of an opponent's motives. When you spend a decade telling a population that their elected officials are "traitors," "enemies of the people," or "scum," you shouldn't be surprised when someone eventually takes those metaphors literally.
An ex-justice secretary cannot "review" a culture of hatred. They cannot subpoena the collective psyche of a nation. So they focus on the "robustness" of police communication instead. It’s safer that way.
The Security Paradox
Let’s talk about the data that these reviews usually ignore.
The UK’s Prevent strategy and the various intelligence-sharing protocols (like MAPPA) are already some of the most comprehensive in the Western world. If these systems failed to stop a targeted attack, the answer is rarely "we need more systems."
In fact, more systems often lead to more noise. When you broaden the criteria for what constitutes a "threat," you flood the intelligence services with so many red flags that the truly dangerous individuals are buried under a mountain of digital paperwork.
The counter-intuitive truth? To catch more killers, we might actually need to monitor fewer people, focusing only on those demonstrating specific, high-intent behaviors rather than every angry person with a Twitter account. But no review led by a former politician will ever suggest doing less. They are politically incentivized to suggest doing more, even if "more" is what caused the blindness in the first place.
Stop Asking "How" and Start Asking "Why"
People also ask: "How can we make MPs' surgeries safer?"
That is the wrong question. It assumes the surgery is the problem.
The right question is: "Why has the threshold for political violence dropped so precipitously?"
The answer lies in the total collapse of the "buffer zone" between private thought and public action. Social media platforms have removed the cooling-off period. In the past, if you wanted to harass an MP, you had to write a letter, find a stamp, and walk to a post office. By the time you reached the pillar box, your heart rate might have slowed down. Now, you can transmit your rage directly into their pocket while you're still in the heat of a manic episode.
A review of MP security that doesn't spend 80% of its time looking at the algorithms of Silicon Valley is a waste of taxpayer money. Yet, we continue to appoint legal experts to solve technological and psychological crises.
The Battle Scars of Bureaucracy
I’ve seen this play out in various sectors—from corporate risk management to national infrastructure. When a "review" is announced, the first thing the relevant agencies do is "scrub." They spend the months leading up to the report's commencement ensuring their paper trails are impeccable.
The review doesn't find the truth; it finds the most polished version of the truth.
The ex-justice secretary will be presented with a curated mountain of evidence. They will interview police chiefs who have already cleared their own internal investigations. They will talk to civil servants who are masters of the "passive-voice" defense.
"Mistakes were made."
"Information was not shared in a timely manner."
"Procedures were not followed to the letter."
These are the cliches of the administrative state. They allow the system to admit to a minor technical flaw so it doesn't have to admit to a major moral failure.
The Price of Honesty
If we were being honest, the review would reach a terrifying conclusion: You cannot protect every MP in a free society.
Risk can be mitigated, but it cannot be eliminated. By pretending that a "review" can provide a blueprint for absolute safety, we are lying to the families of victims and to the public. We are setting the stage for the next tragedy, at which point we will simply appoint another ex-minister to lead another review.
The contrarian move isn't to demand more security. It is to demand a return to a political culture where the stakes aren't framed as existential. If every vote is "the end of the country," then every representative becomes a legitimate target in the eyes of the unstable.
The Actionable Reality
If you actually want to protect representatives, stop looking at the gates and start looking at the rhetoric.
- Decentralize the Target: Instead of centralized "surgeries," move to digital-first constituent engagement for the initial screening, moving to in-person meetings only after a cooling-off period and verification.
- Defund the Performance: Stop spending millions on "reviews" that tell us what we already know. Reallocate that budget to the front-line mental health services that are currently failing to catch the individuals who commit these acts.
- Hold Platforms Accountable: If a platform’s algorithm actively pushes an individual toward violent extremist content, the platform should be legally liable for the outcome. Not the MP, not the police, and not the taxpayer.
We don't need a review led by a ghost of cabinets past. We need to stop pretending that a legalistic inquiry can heal a fractured society.
The review will conclude that we need better CCTV and more panic buttons. It will be wrong.
Panic buttons don't stop bullets, and reviews don't stop the rot.
Stop looking for safety in a report. It isn't there.
