But Amess was stabbed to death by a Somali migrant with ‘religious and ideological motivations’. What does that have to do with social media anonymity?
>While police are investigating whether there are any links to Islamist extremism and have not connected the killing to the targeting of MPs online, allies of Amess said he had voiced growing concern about threats and toxicity within public discourse as they demanded a crackdown.
>Francois, the MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, which neighbours Amess’s Southend West constituency, added: “I suggest that if we want to ensure that our colleague didn’t die in vain, we collectively all of us pick up the baton, regardless of our party and take the forthcoming online harms bill and toughen it up markedly.
So there is absolutely no link between his murder and seemingly any online activity, but they're still going to use his murder to to justify... harsher punishment for being mean to government employees online? Never let a crisis go to waste I guess.
Hitting the nail on the head.
It doesn't actually matter what X is, the important thing for the government is to be seen to be doing something. In reality the calls by UK politicians to end online anonymity will fizzle out in a few weeks once the media cycle moves on, as it's not something they can really do without spending an immense amount of time, money and political capital. In the mean time there will be a flurry of articles like this one rehashing debates that have been going on ever since the first troll posted the first comment on a BBS.