We talk about mum every day, says Jo Cox’s husband
THE widower of Labour MP Jo Cox fought back tears yesterday as he revealed his struggle to explain to the couple’s young children what had happened to their mother.
Brendan Cox said Cuillin and Lejla, who were five and three when Mrs Cox was killed in June, ‘talk about mum every day’ and ask why she died.
He said her death had ‘nothing to do with the 52 per cent of people who voted for Brexit’ but described the time as ‘clearly a moment of heightened tension’.
He also revealed his wife had struggled to deal with the ‘torrents of abuse’ she received after criticising Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Mrs Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed in the street while walking through her Batley and Spen constituency a week before the June 23 EU referendum.
Mr Cox, who released a number of family photographs yesterday, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘We talk about their mum every day... One of their questions in the earliest days was why would someone do this? And that’s very hard to explain.’
On the public reaction to her death, he said: ‘It has been so visual, whether it’s the thousands of people in Trafalgar Square and around the world or whether it’s the people lining the streets of Batley and Spen when we had the funeral... Cuillin said on that day “I knew lots of people loved mummy but I didn’t realise this many people did”.’
Asked about claims linking the attack to the Brexit campaign, he said it ‘was clearly a moment of heightened tension and heightened debate and some of that sometimes got out of control’.
But he also pointed to an ‘increasing propensity to blame others for our problems’, adding: ‘Jo felt it personally when she, for example, criticised Jeremy Corbyn for his leadership, the torrents of abuse that she got from that’.
Former Coronation Street actress Tracy Brabin was elected as Labour MP for Batley and Spen earlier this month.
Thomas Mair, 53, has been charged with Mrs Cox’s murder.