Next time, just send an email. Jared O’Mara MP’s aide chose the wrong moment for a public shaming

Gareth Arnold’s resignation by Twitter highlighted some genuine problems with his boss’s track record – but showed little regard for his mental health

Jared O’Mara has, undeniably, not been the MP that Sheffield Hallam deserves.

It took him more than a year after his election in 2017 to make his maiden speech in the Commons. He has a history of making sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic remarks online – although he has since apologised, and the comments do date back to the early 2000s. Frustratingly, he is still yet to hold a by-election, despite resigning the Labour ticket he was elected on over a year ago.

Some of the blame for this lies with parliament. It is not accessible enough for disabled MPs like O’Mara – the aggressive atmosphere and juvenile jeering is enough to send anyone’s anxiety levels through the roof, let alone someone with a history of poor mental health.

Nevertheless, the MP clearly is doing something wrong. Earlier this year he shut his constituency office down for a month after losing all of his staff. This is unacceptable. It denies vulnerable constituents the assistance they so badly need.

Whatever the reason for O’Mara’s shortcomings as an MP, the fact they exist in such a crucial role means that few can blame his former communications manager, Gareth Arnold, for resigning.

Indeed, whilst explaining his decision to quit on BBC Radio 5 Live last night, Arnold said that there are “people in Sheffield Hallam… who are waiting on their immigration status, there are people who are not getting houses, there are people having their benefits stopped… just because [O’Mara is] not prepared to do his job properly.”

O’Mara has yet to respond to the allegations.

But choosing to resign by posting a humiliating rant from O’Mara’s own Twitter account was not the way for Arnold to go about it. He claims that he posted the tirade because “it’s the one thing I think might motivate change.” However, someone who claims to have known the MP “for absolutely years” is almost certainly aware of his history of anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts, and should have known that public shaming would do anything but.

In the now-deleted Twitter thread, Arnold calls O’Mara a “selfish, degenerate p***k,” and the “most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with.” Posting such abuse from his ex-boss’ social media account was always going to cause a media frenzy.

How must O’Mara have felt when he first became aware of these jarring insults? Perhaps not quite as bad as when he realised the follow-up abuse they would lead to online. He no doubt felt worse still when he read in The Daily Express that he had been “hilariously mocked,” with little regard given to the upset that being reduced to the butt of a joke brings.

If Arnold’s chief complaint is that O’Mara does not represent his constituents by doing the job he is employed to do, his actions will be counterproductive. The deeper someone slips into depression or anxiety, the more they are likely to retreat; the more they are likely to just stay in bed all day. If they do manage to make it to work, there’s little hope of them performing as they should.

Even more critically, his former employer is a vulnerable person – being a public figure does not change this. The battering of his self-esteem – especially given his three suicide attempts the last time he made headlines – is bound to seriously hamper his quality of life.

As a society, we talk a good talk on mental health. Our actions, however, often contradict this. Please, next time, just send an email.

Nick McAlpin is a masters scholar on the University of Cambridge’s MPhil Social Anthropology programme