Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has said she was subjected to “disturbing” verbal abuse while walking with her daughter.
Miller, the businesswoman who took one of the cases that led to the Supreme Court ruling the government’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful, said she was recognised on the street as she took her 12-year-old daughter for an eye test on the day after the court ruling last week.
“People were stopping in their cars and rolling their windows down and calling me ‘traitor’ and saying, ‘There’s a lamppost over there’,” she told The Times in an interview.
“And you just think, it’s extraordinary. You know, I’m with my child and that’s disturbing.”
Miller said her children have known her as a campaigner all their lives and that she tells them: “This is why Mummy is fighting.”
She also has a 14-year-old son and an adult daughter from a previous marriage.
Miller told the newspaper that her teenagers have come across messages disparaging her on social media.
“I get sent letters saying my children are mongrels. I have to make sure that they are not seeing all of this, but I explained to them, ‘We have to just be who we are, and if we reply with anger all we do is stoke those fires.’
“I much prefer to stay calm and try and explain to people and talk, but it’s a hard thing to do,” she told the newspaper.
It comes as MPs from the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Conservative parties, along with an independent, have lambasted the behaviour seen recently in House of Commons’ debates.
The parliament was more than usually adversarial last week on its return after its proroguing was deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court.
Amongst the many shouts and taunts that went around the chamber, Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed fears that his use of words such as “traitor” and “betrayal” was dangerous in the current political climate.
In a letter published in The Times on Monday, Lib Dem MP Luciana Berger, Conservative Paul Masterton, Rosie Duffield from the Labour Party and Stephen Lloyd, a former Lib Dem now sitting as an independent, said they felt “sickened” by what happened in parliament.
“MPs screaming at each other across the floor; a prime minister dismissing fears of violence; and MPs fighting back tears sharing stories about vitriolic abuse they and their families have faced.
“Our political system foments this frenzy, entrenching and encouraging overly tribal and partisan behaviour, which threatens our ability to work together,” they wrote.