say what we all say in private.

Politicians tell us they are unafraid, but they are never the victims. How easy to be unafraid when one is protected from the line of fire. The people have no such protections.

The Manchester-born singer Morrissey has hit out at politicians for their reaction to the bombing in his hometown that has killed 22 people and hospitalised 59 more.

In his statement, the former Smiths frontman claimed that politicians are safe from attacks, while the rest of the country is left vulnerable. The MP Jo Cox was murdered by a rightwing extremist last June.

That last sentence about the murder of Jo Cox is an attempt by The Guardian reporter to undermine Morrissey’s first claim, by suggesting 1) that politicians are not as safe fromattack as Morrissey claims (just look at what happened to Jo Cox); and 2) since Morrissey clearly has in mind the Manchester attack, by a Muslim, The Guardian is quick to divert attention to the “rightwing extremist” who killed Cox, implicitly one among many examples of rightwing violence that might be cited.

A response to The Guardian would note, in the first place, that the murder of Jo Cox was practically a one-off; in the past three decades, the only politicians killed in the U.K., aside from Cox, have been Ian Gow, a sitting MP, in 1990, by the Provisional IRA, and a county councillor, Andrew Pennington, killed in 2000 as he tried to protect an MP who was being attacked — not for political reasons — by a