MP Jo’s children join her tribute on the Thames
THEY should have been celebrating their mother Jo Cox’s 42nd birthday.
Instead, Lejla, three, and her brother Cuillin, five, were yesterday on a barge towing a floating floral memorial to the murdered MP.
They sat with their father Brendan, 37, on the vessel’s stern as it set off from near Tower Bridge, where the family have a houseboat.
It was the first time since Mrs Cox was shot and stabbed a week ago that her grieving family had allowed photographs of the children, who wore yellow lifejackets and waved to wellwishers during the journey along the Thames.
The barge towed a dinghy carrying hundreds of red and white roses in tribute to the late Labour mem-
‘Best mum a child could wish for’
ber for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire.
The 45-minute journey from Hermitage Wharf ended in Westminster, where the dinghy was moored opposite the Houses of Parliament. It will remain there for a week, bearing the words Yorkshire Rose.
Mr Cox and the children, accompanied by friends and supporters, disembarked from the barge at Westminster Pier, where a banner was unfurled saying ‘That which unites us not which divides us’.
It was carried in front of the group as they made the short walk to Trafalgar Square where thousands had gathered for an hour-long rally in tribute to Mrs Cox’s life.
She died after being attacked at her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, last Thursday.
Her husband’s voice broke with emotion as he thanked ‘Jo’s amazing friends, and friends of friends, and even complete strangers’ who had helped to organise the event.
He added: ‘As amazing and deeply touching as all of this is, I wish I wasn’t here today.
‘Not because I’m ungrateful to the organisers and you all for coming, but because of course I’d rather be with Jo. But I wanted to come and show my gratitude and that of all of our family. Your support and love has helped us all and I wanted our children to see what their mum meant to all of you. I know that they will remember today.’
In a moving insight he described his late wife variously as a mountain climber, an awful cook, a middle lane driver, a ball of energy and determination but ‘above all else she was a mum’.
He said: ‘She was the best mum that any child could wish for. And wish we do, to have her back in our lives,’ he said, adding that he had spoken with his children every day since her death about the things they will miss and memories they will cherish forever.
Lily Allen, sporting a purple hairdo, sang Somewhere Only We Know, a song by the band Keane which Mrs Cox used to sing with her husband and children every time they left their holiday cottage near the River Wye.
U2 sent in a specially recorded version of their song Ordinary Love from Los Angeles. There were jigs and reels from Diddley Dee, a band that played at the pair’s wedding.
Earlier in the proceedings, a plane carrying a banner urging people to leave the EU flew noisily over Trafalgar Square. Labour MP Stella Creasy posted on Twitter that the Vote Leave campaign should ‘show some self respect and disappear’.
A spokesman for the official campaign group denied it was its plane.