East Midlands MP is the most abused politician on Twitter

More than 13% of messages he received contained 'toxic' language- like 'stupid' and 'pathetic'.

Author: Maddy BullPublished 9th Nov 2022

New data has found a Nottinghamshire MP has more 'toxic' Tweets written about him- than any other politician in the UK.

13.5% of Tweets directed at Mansfield's Ben Bradley contain 'toxic' language.

He was mentioned in hundreds of toxic-rated tweets after arguing for the privatisation of Channel 4.

During the study- comments that were defined as "rude, disrespectful or unreasonable" and "likely to make someone leave a conversation" were deemed 'toxic'.

All tweets mentioning MPs from March to Mid-April were analysed.

When we asked him why he thinks he's a target, Ben Bradley told us:

"I've always been quite outspoken.

"I've said some bad things in the past and that's led to me getting a lot of stick.

"I entered politics as quite a young person who tried to really proactively engage on social media and tried to be more open and more communicative.

"I think sometimes I pay the price for that openness."

All 20 of the MPs to receive the highest proportion of toxic comments were not members of the cabinet or shadow cabinet.

When asked about the kind of abuse he receives on a daily basi, Ben Bradley said:

"There's a lot of language I can't repeat.

"That stuff doesn't bother me so much.

"The worst thing that I read is, where people have taken what is a bit of a caricature of you, or something that you've said, where things that you said are deliberately twisted into something that means something totally different to what you said or intended.

"Then people in their own minds, behind their keyboards, come up with this picture of you. And it's bears, no relation to you or what you're actually like in real life."

The Mansfield MP has previously said he's considering stepping down at the next election because of the amount of abuse he receives online.

"Unfortunately, I had somebody who threatened to kidnap my wife and who did that on Twitter.

"You never know quite know how seriously to take those things, cause most of it you get, I get death threats and get that kind of thing semi regularly, but this seemed quite serious, and the last thing you would want to do would be to ignore it.

"It ended up being some spotty kids in his mum's house. And when the police knocked the door down, he burst into tears.

He clearly was just a keyboard Warrior who didn't understand the impact of what he was saying on Twitter."

Twitter was unavailable for comment.

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