Labour voter’s face was full of hatred as he abused my wife

ON the eve of the last election Johnny Mercer, the candidate for Plymouth Moor View, was with his wife Felicity when a man in a van started hurling abuse at them.

The driver pulled up on the grass and approached Mrs Mercer, who was holding a campaign sign.

He yelled in her face and screamed obscenities about the ‘f****** Tories’.

Then he turned towards Mr Mercer, who thought he was about to hit him.

When the MP asked what was wrong, he said he was ‘just a Labour supporter’.

Mr Mercer, 35, said: ‘His face was full of hate and rage. It was the visceral hatred of it that struck me.’

After the driver verbally abused his wife, the former Army officer told him to follow him round the back of the van if he wanted a chat. ‘I asked what was wrong with him, since when had he suffered some huge injustice that had led to this seething rage?’ he said. He said he hadn’t, he was just a Labour supporter. I told him his behaviour was unacceptable.

‘I had already become used to having a high threshold for unacceptable behaviour in this election. When did it become okay to threaten women with violence?

‘To scare and intimidate women in public for no reason other than they support a different political party to you?’

He received 23,567 votes, increasing his majority from just over 1,000 to 5,000 more than Labour, whose candidate Sue Dann came second.

Mr Mercer, who served three tours in Afghanistan, has become a leading parliamentary defender of British troops subject to a witch-hunt over their alleged misconduct on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.