Mike Freer: ‘My husband and family did not sign up for this abuse’

On February 1, Freer announced that he would not be standing again at the next election and he says it’s security fund of which he’s “particularly proud”. Although he adds that it’s odd to be proud of something that’s needed to defend his constituents from danger. “It sounds rather perverse, doesn’t it?”

It’s 9am, and self-professed “caffeine addict” Freer requests a coffee. He’s no coffee snob; instant is fine, he says – it’s just about the caffeine. For the past two years he’s been doing intermittent fasting, and he’s pleased to have lost 5kg.

Freer was taken aback by the intense media response to his announcement that he’s stepping down. An interview he did with the Daily Mail he anticipated appearing on a bottom-right corner in the paper; certainly not a page-and-a-half spread and the front page. “And then the phone lit up with every media outlet,” he says.

But it was the reason for which he is standing down that is shocking: safety fears due to a series of death threats, abuse and intimidation that culminated in an arson attack at his constituency office on Ballards Lane on Christmas Eve.

Mike Freer MP's office suffered serious damage after a fire on Christmas eve (Photo: Twitter)[Missing Credit]

Before that attack, there was the Molotov cocktail left on his doorstep, being followed around Brent Cross shopping centre and shouted at, notes left on his car, and a stabbing threat from banned Islamist group Muslims Against Crusades in 2011. And in 2021, he had a “narrow miss” from being attacked by Ali Harbi Ali, who later stabbed Tory MP David Amess to death during a constituency surgery.

Fanatic: Jihadi Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered MP David Amess last October [Missing Credit]

“If you look at Ali Harbi Ali, he was radicalised, he did describe himself as a soldier of Isis, so clearly that is an issue. He also hasn’t been explicit as to why he targeted me and David Amess and Michael Gove [who Ali had researched]. David and I have similar views on the Middle East, on Iran and on Israel. So I think it’s because of our stance on Middle East issues, rather than specifically on Israel. And as you know, I’m quite outspoken on Israeli issues and to a degree on the Iranian regime.”

Freer points to Muslims Against Crusades’ “very long track record” of antisemitism, and calling him “a Jewish homosexual pig”. “But the more low-level stuff can be anything from homophobic to antisemitic. There’s a definite thread.”

He found out that Ali came to his Finchley office on September 17, 2021 – he knows the date off the top of his head, it was that frightening – but by some stroke of luck he wasn’t there. Normally on a Friday and weekend Freer would be in the constituency; Monday to Thursday he spends in Westminster. But that Thursday night there had been a reshuffle, and Boris Johnson had asked him to come into Westminster. “Otherwise, I’d have been in my Finchley office as normal.” Ali had apparently done several recces of the office. But that day, he was actually outside, waiting. Freer’s agent remembers someone hanging around.

“We’ve never done walk-ins,” Freer explains. “But in between appointments, I’d run across the road to the corner shop and buy a can of Coke or go to Da Vincenzo’s and buy a coffee. And that’s where he was hanging around. And I live in the patch, I’m very accessible and reasonably well-known, so people often stop me in the street and chat, and he probably would have attacked me. So it was a narrow escape.”

It was then that his husband, Angelo, a teacher, told him: “I don’t want you to stand again. This is too much.”

How did Freer respond? “I said, ‘It’s an isolated incident. Let’s put this into perspective.”

After Amess’s murder, Freer had a “massive” security upgrade at home and at the office, and he was assigned a government car to drive. “I could have technically used it 24 hours a day,” he says, preferring to use it only for appointments that people knew about. Angelo said, “I’m not happy about it, but it’s your decision.” The arson attack was the last straw. When Freer attempted to reassure him that it might have been “random oddballs”, his husband said: “You’re done.”

On the whole, Freer’s inbox has been flooded with emails voicing sadness for what he has been going through, and the fact he is moving on. But some have called him a coward. It’s not hard to appreciate why he’s taken this difficult decision, but it does feel like a victory for the bullies. “To a degree, I sign up for it,” he says. “You don’t go into public life expecting everyone to throw rose petals at your feet. But my husband doesn’t sign up for it, my wider family doesn’t sign up for it.

“Yes, I’ve decided to walk away from a position of influence, and that’s a fair challenge to say you’ve allowed them to win. But on the other hand, Angelo didn’t sign up for that.”

It was after his near miss with Ali that Freer started wearing a stab-proof vest in order to continue doing surgeries at locations as public as supermarkets, when he stands by the front door for people to come and chat.

“That level of anxiety has only grown,” he says, pointing to the knife attack in a Golders Green shop. Angelo told him, “See, I told you. It only takes one.”

Voicing his experiences has also led colleagues to share the death threats they’ve also faced. “I’m seeing the Speaker today,” says Freer. “And my view is we should publish the full list (not by name).”

Freer has said previously that he “fears for his life” since the arson attack, but today he is more circumspect. “We MPs tend to have gallows humour, we tend to brush it off.”

Even this week when he received a threatening call to his office from a repeat offender, who even called with their number on display, the attitude was: “Oh well, that’s this week’s threat.” But it has had a huge impact.

He says there has been a “definite increase” in the level of abuse and aggression over the years. And while the parliamentary authorities know the “serious stuff” - the death and bomb threats - there is a constant rumble of lower-level incidents, like the graffiti on his office last year, or those phone threats. But it’s not about calling for more security.

“My office is a fortress,” he says. In his home, he has new security windows, privacy shutters so people can’t see in, security lighting, a camera on the front door. “I’ve got panic buttons in every room. There’s not much more I can do. And people say, ‘we need to give MPs bodyguards.’ No, we don’t need bodyguards, we don’t need cars.”

None of that, he says, is addressing the “root cause”, which is why people are empowered in the first place. Freer blames social media, where antisemitic material and sensitive content is rampant. “It is toxic. It allows people to say things without repercussion. It allows people to see things that they shouldn’t see, and become desensitised. They see things on social media, and therefore it must be true.

“We’ve got a real problem with the under-30s. I speak to colleagues, and the level of antisemitism that has become accepted and ingrained is a real worry. We’ve got a piece of work to do.”

Freer himself has been sent some “pretty offensive messages” over Gaza, which he immediately reported to Instagram. “Nothing happened,” he says. “We’ve all seen antisemitism on Facebook and Twitter, but what happens? Close the account down, and two minutes later up pops another one. So that’s two things we really need to have a look at: getting things taken down and getting people to check facts.”

He says another cause of empowering threatening behaviour is the lack of visible arrests at the pro-Palestine demonstrations taking place on London’s streets. Freer understands that police worry about causing riots, but doesn’t believe that taking video evidence to arrest offenders later is enough of a deterrent.

“I do challenge the commissioner,” he says. “They’ve got a very difficult job, I’m not diminishing that. But visible arrests are important. We’ve seen demonstrations, we’ve seen people saying things, doing things, that are over the line.”

Freer says that when he’s challenged the Met, they’ve assured him that the offender would be arrested later, and it would be announced on X/ Twitter. “Most of my community, the more Orthodox people, aren’t necessarily on Twitter. We need to see people arrested there and then. People can see the marches, they see the banners, they hear the chants on television, and nothing happens in their eyes and then it becomes legitimate. There’s no visible deterrent.”

It was after moving to Finchley in 1988, and being elected to Barnet Council in 1990 for the St Paul’s ward, that he first “embraced the community and the community embraced” him. “It’s just felt like this massive, great big hug for 30 odd years. It’s genuinely a community that has been wonderfully warm and welcoming.”

But his interest in Judaism goes back to childhood. Raised in Manchester, he would visit his aunt in Cheetham where he observed the Orthodox community and asked questions about the men in black hats and long coats. He later took A Level religious studies.

“I’ve always been really interested. And I think I used to drive some of the local Rabbonim mad with my questions. Rabbi Mirvis, when he was at Kinloss, was a great Talmudic source.”

Freer liked Rabbi Miriam Berger’s comment that he was so frequently at FRS that members assumed he was Jewish and from another shul. “People just assume I’m Jewish, which I take as a compliment. But obviously, other people have different views. Quite a lot of my Jewish friends used to say I spent more time at shul than they did.”

He also admires the community’s resilience and how it stands together, not just in dealing with antisemitism, but in its values of education, charity, and helping others. “Amazing tenets that underpin the religion. That is really quite phenomenal.”

Recognising the unknown of whether he would have been reelected, Freer says he leaves the job that he loves with “mixed emotions”. “Stepping down from a community I live at the heart of, that I’m part of, but will no longer be representing in Parliament, is a huge wrench.”

But the community should not feel abandoned. “I’m not going away,” he says. “I live in Finchley and I am not deserting the community or my support for Israel - I’m just going to have to find a different platform to be able to continue my support.”