SALLY UNDERWOOD POLITICAL ANIMAL Blame game

LAST week Matt Hancock was filmed being pushed and harassed by an angry member of the public.

Now while I think most people would probably admit to having some fairly dark thoughts about politicians some days, very few would agree that this behaviour came anywhere near to being acceptable.

Apart from anything else, by resorting to violence, Geza Tarjanyi, the man who shoved Hancock at a tube station, he ended up inciting sympathy for the former health secretary; something which he surely can’t have been trying to achieve.

Engaging in debate in some sort of meaningful way at a local event might have been a better way to go if what Tarjanyi really wanted was a chance of in some way holding Hancock to account.

When I first worked in parliament, I shared an office with a Liberal Democrat lord whose researcher had died saving him from a knife attacker.

Later, in the Commons, I worked in the office next to an MP who still had scars on his hands from when a woman had attacked him with a knife at a constituency surgery.

In another MP’s office I worked in a colleague had to be physically scrubbed down by a team in hazmat suits after opening a letter containing what looked like anthrax.

It later turned out to be talcum powder and was part of a series sent to various MP’s offices, but it certainly wasn’t a good day for my colleague.

In recent years, Jo Cox and David Amess haven’t been as lucky in the threats against their lives.

The repeated, almost casual, reminders of violence against politicians I came across even in my short time in Parliament is a reminder that this isn’t always quite the cushy career we often consider it.

We all criticise politicians. We all think we can do better. Sometimes (even often) we’re right.

But when we start to look at them as a whole different breed of human beings from us, and consider behaviour we would normally never engage in as being acceptable, like Tarjanyi, we start the descent down an extremely slippery slope that ends in tragedy more often than we’re perhaps aware of.

Sallysopinionsareherownandarenotnecessarilyrepresentativeofthoseofthepublishers,advertisersorsponsors.

THE British Benevolent Fund is one of the oldest charities in Spain for the British community. It was set up under the auspices of the embassy and with whom it still maintains a close relationship through the consular network.

Many people assume that the consulate have the financial resources to fund Britons in need and distress, which they do not. Instead the consulates look to partners, including the British Benevolent Fund across the country to step in when there are no other alternatives.

After Brexit there are many Britons who had been living in Spain who found themselves as not officially resident with no right to Spanish state support or healthcare.

For those who have health issues and no resources for private health care this increasingly means a return to the UK.

Many times, those returnees are alone with no family, elderly with health issues and no or limited resources.

Imagine the feeling.

It’s not a happy ending to a life lived in Spain.

The consulates do the heavy lifting of finding accommoda­