Female MSPs reveal some of the 'utterly relentless' online abuse they suffer
More than three quarters of the MSPs who responded said the abuse had become worse after they were first elected
Female MSPs have spoken out about the online abuse they have suffered, with one Labour frontbencher revealing she has been branded a “poisoned dwarf” while a Tory said she was told she would be “set alight”.
Labour education spokeswoman Pam Duncan-Glancy said that online abuse had been “utterly relentless”, and she has been called a “poisoned dwarf”, “witch” and “lying c***”.
Ms Duncan-Glancy spoke out about the abuse as Holyrood magazine found almost all the MSPs it questioned had experienced some form of online abuse. This included rape threats, death threats and severe misogynistic abuse, the magazine said. It contacted all 59 sitting female MSPs and received responses from 22 of them between January 29 and February 25 this year.
More than three quarters of the MSPs who responded said the abuse had become worse after they were first elected.
Conservative MSP Annie Wells told the magazine that she had been told she would be “set alight”.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie described social media as a “sewer”, and said the problem of abuse was “worse for female politicians”.
Alba MSP Ash Regan expressed concern that abuse of female politicians had become “more socially acceptable” and risked being “left ignored”.
Of those female MSPs standing again in the 2026 Holyrood election, about three quarters said they expected hateful content to increase between now and then.
Meanwhile, some MSPs told Holyrood that they had considered stepping down because of online abuse, and SNP MSP Elena Whitham, who is not standing next year, said harassment “definitely played a big part” in her decision.
It comes after a pilot programme at Holyrood found that for 38 participating MSPs, 461 threats were received that were deemed serious enough to be passed to Police Scotland.
On average, each MSP was on the receiving end of 12 abusive posts which were reported to police in less than a year, it found. The pilot ran from mid-June 2023 to the end of March 2024, and found abuse was generally focused on characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation and race.
Initially set up in the wake of the death of MP Sir David Amess, the Scottish Parliament trial was later made permanent.
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