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Anna Soubry was confronted by protesters outside Westminster Palace
Brexit

Pro-EU MP Anna Soubry criticises police after group of protesters call her 'Nazi' outside UK parliament

Anna Soubry was forced to stop after being heckled as she conducted interviews on BBC and Sky News.

A CONSERVATIVE MP has hit out at police for not intervening after she was called a “Nazi” by a group of protesters outside the House of Parliament in London.

Anna Soubry was heckled as she conducted a number of interviews at the Palace of Westminster, stopping to address them as she spoke with both BBC and Sky News.

During her interview with BBC, Soubry was forced to pause mid-sentence after a number of protesters chanted “Soubry is a Nazi”, telling interviewer Simon McCoy “I do object to being called a Nazi, actually”.

“I just think this is astonishing, this is what has happened to our country,” she added, after receiving an apology from McCoy.

“But let’s try and move on and be positive about things.”

Similar chants were also directed at Soubry, who supports a second Brexit referendum, as she carried out a live interview on Sky News.

On that occasion, she also stopped to address the chants, saying she was not fazed by them.

“[I'm] a lass from Worksop, so I don’t get scared by these people or intimidated,” she said.

“I was a reporter during the miners’ strike, so I don’t feel physically intimidated. My difficulty is I want to respond and you mustn’t, so I’m really behaving myself.”

Soubry was later confronted and followed by several protesters as she entered the Palace of Westminster, when she was called a “fascist” and asked why she was unwilling to be confronted by members of the public.

Posting on social media later, Soubry questioned why police did not act while politicians and journalists were heckled.

“Apparently MPs and politicians are meant to accept it as part of the democratic process,” she said.

“I fail to see why journalists and technicians should be subjected to the same abuse and intimidation as the police stand by and do nothing. They tried to stop me getting into Parliament.”

She also told BBC News that the police needed to “do their job” and prevent such incidents from happening in future.

According to the same source, the Metropolitan Police are investigating reports of a public order offence in the area, but no arrests have been made.

A Downing Street spokesperson criticised the incident as “unacceptable” and said MPs “should be free to do their jobs without any form of intimidation”.

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