The Conservative MP Sir David Amess has died after he was stabbed several times during a surgery at his constituency in Essex. Amess, 69, who has represented Southend West in Essex since 1997, was stabbed several times at a Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea.
Essex police subsequently arrested a man.
Multiple updates at:
In case you haven’t heard of him:
The murder of an MP hasn’t happened since the murder of Jo Cox in 2016, has it?
I have to admit the phrase “constituency surgery” was a new one to me but it’s equivalent to the events American officeholders have during which they meet constituents.
I read this and thought the surgeon had killed him by stabbing him with his surgical blade.
Same. Or someone got into the operating room.
A political surgery, constituency surgery, constituency clinic, mobile office or sometimes advice surgery, in British and Irish politics, is a series of one-to-one meetings that a Member of Parliament (MP), Teachta Dála (TD) or other political officeholder may have with their constituents.
A GP surgery is:
A generic UK term for the location where a GP regularly sees patients. A particular group of patients may be managed in the GP’s surgery (office—US) by a nurse or midwife in a particular timeslot during the week; that session is called a clinic.
There is no suggestion that surgery will be carried out!
A GP is a General Practitioner.
Very sorry to hear this. No elected official in a modern democracy should be in fear of constituents, or anyone else, while carrying out his or her duties in public. May Sir David rest in peace.
Agree. Political violence is a direct threat to any democratic foem of government.
From the Guardian article:
I expect I would have disagreed with him about a bunch of stuff, being a Tory and all, but he sounds like a decent guy. What a fucking senseless waste 
British police have released information indicating the attacker was a Muslim extremist, committing a deliberate act of terrorism against the British people.
This term is one that Americans do use.
As for the political surgery…kind of like a professor’s office hours, maybe?
Would it have been appropriate for someone in the Royal Family to make a statement?
Yes: The analogy is exactly with a GP: you go to your GP for advice on your health and diagnosis of your symptoms, and the GP is your guide and if necessary champion in accessing specialist medical care. You go to your MP if you have a problem with government.
MPs are expected to spend a lot of time on constituency casework, and it’s usual for them to be available in the constituency, usually for a couple of hours around a weekend, for constituents to bring their various bureaucratic problems or other issues. Often these will be re-directed to some other channel (local government councillor, or whatever), but an enquiry from an MP’s office often un-gums the delay in Mrs Smith’s application for XYZ - and the nature and volume of the different problems gives the MP a handle on things going wrong in government, at the grass roots level.
Here’s one senior MP’s overview of how it works and how it’s changed over the years.
Horrible news.
Sounds like he was a very decent and earnest figure. Never sought to put his career and power first by taking up a cabinet role in all his time but rather focused on his local constituents and charitable causes and clearly was very popular.
A doctor’s ‘office’ in American terms is called his ‘surgery’ here - even though precious little surgery is done there, and most of what there is will be done by the practice nurse.
A doctor who became an MP started the concept of open sessions where his constituents could come to see him about their problems.
Queen guitarist Brian May posted this tribute to Amess yesterday; though I suspect that the two of them had different views on many issues (with May likely being far more liberal), he considered Amess an ally and friend.
Exactly why this MP was chosen is at present unclear, as he did not have a particularly high profile.
Count me among those who were really, really confused by “constituency surgery”: he was stabbed while he was having a medical procedure done? in a church? or was he the surgeon? WTF?
It’s a political “procedure”, and, yes, occasionally politicians do get murdered during such meetings.
I’m reminded, a bit, of the 2011 assassination attempt against Gabby Giffords, a U.S. representative from Arizona, which occurred while she was holding a similar, public “meet your representative” event in her district. Giffords was critically injured, but survived; however, the gunman killed six others in the attack, and injured a number more.
Giffords, too, was not a particularly high-profile figure, except perhaps on a local level. The gunman was a conspiracy theorist, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It appears that he had a grudge against Giffords, though it also appears that a part of that grudge may have been based on a belief that women should not be in politics (as well as a general distrust of politicians).
FWIW, it is somewhat rare for members of the U.S. House of Representatives to meet one-on-one with non-wealthy constituents who need their help in dealing with the government. Congressional districts are much bigger than British House of Commons constituencies, members of Congress have large staffs including people committed to constituent services, and unfortunately in recent years (thanks to bitter partisanship and enhanced security risks, as former Congresswoman Giffords could tell you) many members are these days even less likely to want to have face-to-face dealings with the public outside of their Capitol Hill or district offices.