On Friday afternoon, Southend West Conservative MP Sir David Amess was stabbed to death at his constituency surgery (walk-in meetings with your local MP) in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Police forces are treating this horrific event as a terrorist attack, and a twenty-five-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and is being held under the Terrorism Act of 2000. Whitehall have released a statement saying that the man held is Ali Harbi Ali, a British national.

Mr Ali was not on MI5’s "subjects of interest" watch list. However, he had been referred to the government's terrorism prevention programme, known as “Prevent”. Officers found the murder weapon - a knife - at the scene and have declared this a terrorist incident. The police are not searching for anyone else.

Similarly, Labour Party MP, Jo Cox was stabbed and shot while attending a meeting in her constituency of Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire five and a half years ago. Her husband Brendan Cox commented that this latest attack made it clear that terrorists wanted to destroy democracy because it is “our most potent weapon for holding our society together”.

This murder re-opened the debate of whether MP’s should have security. Home Secretary Priti Patel has called for the Police force to review MP’s security situations with “immediate effect”.

Sir David Amess was a married man and father of five children, often described as “one of the kindest, most gentle people in politics.” The sixty-nine year-old was a strong Brexit supporter and had served as an MP for 38 years, initially in Basildon from 1983, before representing Southend West from 1997. He campaigned prominently against abortion, and for animal welfare issues, having supported a ban on fox hunting. He was knighted in 2015.

Tributes around the country have occurred for Mr Amess including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and the PM, hailing Sir David's "profound sense of public duty".

R.I.P. Sir David Amess.