Why is Sir David Amess dead? The proximate explanation of the death of an MP that personified the best of parliamentary service is grimly straightforward: a horrifying act of violence during his weekly Friday meetings with his constituency. But what of the psychological, political, or ideological build-up to that moment? What drove someone to stab a dedicated public servant to death as his horrified constituents looked on?
To have read the British press in recent days is to be left with the impression that Amess’s death was, first and foremost, a consequence of a shortage of civility of British public life.
