  The UK has had a volatile political environment for some years now, with
Brexit and leadership crises marking the past five years. With this work, we
wanted to understand more about how the global health emergency, COVID-19,
influences the amount, type or topics of abuse that UK politicians receive when
engaging with the public. With this work, we wanted to understand more about
how the global health emergency, COVID-19, influences the amount, type or
topics of abuse that UK politicians receive when engaging with the public. This
work covers the period of June to December 2020 and analyses Twitter abuse in
replies to UK MPs. This work is a follow-up from our analysis of online abuse
during the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The paper
examines overall abuse levels during this new seven month period, analyses
reactions to members of different political parties and the UK government, and
the relationship between online abuse and topics such as Brexit, government's
COVID-19 response and policies, and social issues. In addition, we have also
examined the presence of conspiracy theories posted in abusive replies to MPs
during the period. We have found that abuse levels toward UK MPs were at an
all-time high in December 2020 (5.4% of all reply tweets sent to MPs). This is
almost 1% higher that the two months preceding the General Election. In a
departure from the trend seen in the first four months of the pandemic, MPs
from the Tory party received the highest percentage of abusive replies from
July 2020 onward, which stays above 5% starting from September 2020 onward, as
the COVID-19 crisis deepened and the Brexit negotiations with the EU started
nearing completion.
