The terrible news of an attack on the federal MP, Dr Helen Haines, has saddened a nation.

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Tragically though, it will have come as less of a surprise to anyone prominent in public debate, such is the free-wheeling descent from civility in our digitised public square.

Rank personal abuse on social media, most of it heroically anonymous, is the agar from which the super-charged scourge of misogyny, racism, and a proto-violent culture have grown.

That it would be the gold-hearted Haines attacked - a woman of unimpeachable service, intelligence and shining moral clarity, is devastating.

Powerful public women are clearly a problem for some men. We cannot deny this.

In recent years, the two British MPs murdered were both women, Labour's Jo Cox and the ex-Tory- turned Reform UK member, Ann Widdecombe.

These brutal murders - femicides, assassinations - are the very definition of peak male cowardice. They show that even as women have overcome barriers to achieve public office and approach equal recognition in our parliaments, they are overrepresented in one shameful index: as the subject of vitriolic and violent attacks.

Weak men who cannot control themselves.

I confess to writing these words through an intense sadness. Tears over Haines for whom my admiration, like so many, is unrivalled.

And tears for a moderate, civilised political culture admired the........

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