In the weeks leading up to the attack on Sir David, the defendant also carried out internet research into a number of other leading politicians, including Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader and Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor of the exchequer. 

He also looked up the Wikipedia page for the Conservative Party Conference.

He studied how best to kill someone with a knife by watching Islamic State stabbing tutorials, the Old Bailey was told.

After eventually deciding to target an MP at a constituency surgery, the defendant spotted a tweet from Sir David advertising appointments and contacted the MP’s office in Southend falsely claiming to be someone who was moving to the area.

Opening the case against Mr Ali, Tom Little QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “Having arranged the meeting by fraud, he travelled across London armed with the knife that he was to use to murder Sir David Amess. This was nothing less than an assassination for terrorist purposes. It is a crime to which, we say, he has no defence.”

After being introduced to Sir David at the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where he was holding one of his regular surgeries, the defendant suddenly launched a “vicious and frenzied” attack on the MP, stabbing him 21 times in the face, chest, arm and leg. 

The MP also suffered wounds to his hands as he desperately tried to fend off the attack.