Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer have visited the scene where an MP was stabbed to death.
The pair put their rivalry aside as they arrived together at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex on Saturday morning.
It follows the tragic killing of of Sir David Amess yesterday, which has been declared a terrorist incident.
The Conservative MP, who represented Southend West, was attacked during a local constituency surgery.
A 25-year-old man, believed to be a Briton with Somali heritage, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.Mr Johnson and Sir Keir laid flowers and silently paid their respects on the quiet residential street outside the Belfairs Methodist Church.
Home Secretary Priti Patel and Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle were also in attendance.
The death of the 69-year-old veteran backbencher comes just five years after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.
Ms Patel has ordered an immediate review into MPs’ safety amid renewed worries about the security risks in an increasingly polarised political era.
Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood has suggested pausing face-to-face meetings between MPs and constituents until that has been completed.
But not everyone agrees.
Councillor Kevin Buck, deputy chairman of the Southend West constituency association, said he is against moving MPs’ surgery meetings to Zoom.
Mr Buck said he does not believe Sir David would have wanted meetings to go online, nor would he have wanted extra protection such as metal detectors and a police presence at face-to-face talks with constituents.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said: ‘I don’t think he would have approved, I personally don’t approve really, I know we have to take our own personal safety very seriously, but I enjoy, as Sir David did, meeting the people.
‘That’s why we do this, so that we can lead the people and help the people and I don’t want to do that from behind a TV screen or from behind the glass screen or a security box because then we’ve lost.’
Ivan Henderson, a former Labour MP for Harwich from 1997-2005 and now a town councillor, said MPs deal with all sorts of people and ‘there are occasions where you do fear for your own safety’.
But he said this is ‘part of the duty that you take on when you’re elected and it’s expected’.
Speaking to BBC Essex, the councillor said MPs are always out and about at events in their constituencies and he’s ‘not sure how much safer you can be’.
‘You couldn’t have security alongside you all the time because then you’re shutting down that openness MPs and councillors need,’ he said.
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