Nothing will change in the wake of Mike Freer’s decision to stand down. That a Member of Parliament says he is leaving politics because of intimidation from Islamists is troubling enough, but Freer is a government minister. If the state cannot protect him, can it protect any of us?

In a letter to his local constituency association, the Conservative MP says he has received ‘several serious threats to my personal safety’ during his 14 years representing Finchley and Golders Green. He cited ‘attacks by Muslims Against Crusades, Ali Harbi Ali and the recent arson attack (where the motives remain unclear)’ for motivating his decision.

Everyone will agree that something must be done, and then proceed to do nothing

Freer claims that Muslims Against Crusades, an Islamist organisation, first issued him with a death threat in 2011, telling him ‘let Stephen Timms be a warning to you’. Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, had been stabbed the year before in an attempted assassination by an Islamist. Supporters of Muslims Against Crusades would go on to storm a Finchley mosque where Freer was holding an event and shout that he was a ‘Jewish homosexual pig’ and was ‘defiling the house of Allah’. The group was later proscribed by Home Secretary Theresa May.

Ali Harbi Ali is the Islamist who murdered Sir David Amess over the MP’s support for air strikes against the Islamic State and membership of Conservative Friends of Israel. Freer was, along with Michael Gove, one of two alternative targets Ali researched. In his sentencing remarks following conviction, Mr Justice Sweeney noted that Ali ‘carried out reconnaissance in the vicinity of Mr Freer’s constituency premises in Finchley’ one month before his assassination of Amess. Freer wasn’t in his office that day by a matter of pure chance: then prime minister Boris Johnson had summoned him to No. 10 to appoint him a government minister.

The alleged arson attack Freer refers to in his letter saw his constituency office set ablaze on Christmas Eve last year. Two people have been charged and remanded. Freer told local party members that the incidents had ‘weighed heavily on me and my husband, Angelo’, as had ‘many “low level” incidents’, including abusive letters pinned to his car and a fake bomb left outside his constituency office. Following the fire he received an email telling him he was ‘the kind of person who deserved to be set alight’. On police advice, he now wears a knife-proof vest when attending events in his constituency. In his letter he said: ‘No MP can operate effectively without the support of their spouse and wider family. Sadly the serious incidents place intolerable stress on them too.’

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Freer said he believes his support for Israel is a motivating factor for the attacks on him. Finchley and Golders Green has a large Jewish population and Freer added that many of his constituents ‘won’t come into central London at all’ anymore because of weekly anti-Israel demonstrations.

I said at the outset that nothing would change as a result of Freer’s decision. How do I know that? Because I know this country and I know what will happen now. There will be outrage across the political spectrum. MPs will decry it as a democratic scandal that a parliamentarian must leave parliament for his own safety. There will be fiercely-worded editorials in newspapers, and thunderous op-eds along with them. Someone from a think tank will propose legislation or a new policy that ministers will pretend to consider but which will never be heard from again. Sooner or later, we will learn why it’s all the fault of ‘the far right’.

In short, everyone will agree that something must be done, and then proceed to do nothing. That is the way of it in a country that prefers the soothing comforts of denial to the unpleasant truth about the Islamist threat and our continued indulgence of it. That is why nothing changes.

Nothing changed after the October 2021 Leigh-on-Sea attack when Amess was stabbed 21 times by the Islamist Ali. MPs who gathered in Parliament to mourn him blamed social media for his death and urged a crackdown on abusive tweets.

Nothing changed after the June 2020 Reading attack, when Islamist Khairi Saadallah murdered three people in a public park. Saadallah was in the UK as an asylum seeker after having fought in Libya for the Salafist terror group Ansar al-Sharia. The sentencing judge said he was motivated by ‘advancing his extremist Islamic cause’.

Nothing changed after the November 2019 London Bridge attack, when Islamist Usman Khan murdered two people at Fishmongers’ Hall. He had been released from prison the previous year after serving less than half of a 16-year sentence for his part in a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange. Nothing changed after the June 2017 London Bridge attack, when Islamists Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba murdered eight people, shouting ‘this is for Allah’ while they did so.

Nothing changed after the May 2017 Manchester Arena attack, when Islamists Salman and Hashem Abedi murdered 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert. The Abedi brothers were supportive of the Islamic State. Their parents had come to the UK as refugees from Libya and their father was a member of the Islamist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group sect.

Nothing changed after the March 2017 Westminster attack, when Islamist Khalid Masood murdered five people including Keith Palmer, an unarmed police constable who died protecting the seat of British democracy.  Nothing changed after the May 2013 Woolwich attack, when Islamists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale hacked fusilier Lee Rigby to death in ‘retaliation for deaths in Muslim lands’.

Nothing changed after the attack on Stephen Timms at his constituency surgery in May 2010, when Islamist Roshonara Choudhry stabbed the Blair-era minister ‘to get revenge for the people of Iraq’. Choudhry was a devotee of radical Islamic preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. Or, as the Guardian described her at the time, ‘a gifted student from a humble background’ who was ‘overcoming the barriers of racism, Islamophobia, sexism and poverty’ and ‘wanted to become a teacher, helping to bring the best out of the young people in her charge’.

Nothing changed after the July 2005 attacks, when 52 people were murdered in London by Islamists Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Germaine Lindsay. In a video statement, ringleader Khan said he was ‘protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters’.

Nothing will change after Mike Freer’s announcement. This is just how things are in Britain now. If a religious education teacher shows pupils a cartoon of Mohammed during a lesson on blasphemy, he must go into hiding. If a schoolboy scuffs a copy of the Quran, his mother must plead for him down at the local mosque, with her hair covered of course. If Muslims from one branch of Islam demand the censorship of a film produced by Muslims from another branch of Islam, cinemas will acquiesce for ‘the safety of our staff and customers’.

There are four million Muslims in the UK. Many contribute public service, enterprise, creativity and innovations in scientific and technological fields. Many are impelled by the teachings of the Quran and the hadith to live good lives, behave modestly, raise their children with a strong moral compass and give generously of their time and coin to charitable and community causes. These people should know – and I suspect most do know – that they and the faith they practise are not at issue here.

What is at issue is Islamism, a totalitarian politics that aims to destroy and supersede Britain’s liberal democratic order. In intimidating a government minister into not seeking re-election, it has scored a significant victory. Reversing that victory will require a governing class that grasps the nature and scale of the threat and is prepared to change its response accordingly. Islamism is the enemy within. It does not tolerate Britain’s traditions and so Britain must become an intolerably hostile place for this ideology and its adherents.

I see almost no grounds for optimism in this regard. Nothing will change because we are still not prepared to face up to the threat. When the moment calls for self-confidence, we choose submission.