In that child’s cry we heard the true cost of this killing
AFTER an hour of speeches remembering Jo Cox (Lab, Batley & Spen), the Speaker put the matter to the House. The motion – that MPs had ‘considered’ the tributes – was passed with a defiant roar of ‘ayes’.
We had a tearful, emotive afternoon down here in Westminster, almost everyone wearing fat, white roses. A busy day for the florists of SW1.
But for all the important names who spoke, all the heft of this palatial stage, the most piercing contribution came from an upstairs gallery. It happened when David Cameron was speaking and there came the squeak of a toddler.
Lejla Cox, aged three, was sitting on her father Brendan’s lap while these grown-ups spoke their long words about her missing mummy.
Lejla’s brother Cuillin, five, sat beside her and was comforted – or was it the other way round? – by his maternal grandmother.
The little ones behaved beautifully and there was sparse need for the comics the family had brought to occupy them. For that one second, Lejla’s voice piped up, a piccolo fluting under this vast, vaulted roof.
In that instant the human cost of this killing was voiced. Jo Cox, a new MP, had not yet made her mark in the Chamber. That did not stop the Commons parading its loss with all the theatre and pomp at its command.
At the end of the session there was clapping and a silent file-out as MPs followed the Serjeant at Arms to divine service at St Margaret’s church. Soon the strains of ‘Lord of All Hopefulness’ to the
tune of Slane came floating across Parliament Square; later ‘Bread of Heaven’, sung con forza. The Chamber was packed as tributes began after 2.30pm.
A few MPs were in tears even before a word was heard. Helen Whately (Con, Faversham & Mid Kent) clutched a damp hanky.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Con, Mid Sussex), gaunt these days, held a hand to one side of his old face. A seat on the Labour benches – where Mrs Cox used to perch – was left empty save for a couple of long-stemmed roses, one white, one red. After preliminary remarks from the Speaker, Jeremy Corbyn opened the speeches.
Mr Corbyn was grizzled, by his standards smartly-attired in black suit and tie.
He demanded a ‘gentler, kinder politics’. Mr Cameron said he had first met Jo Cox in 2006, when she was an aid worker in Darfur.
He had gone there as Leader of the Opposition and not all her friends had been exactly thrilled that she had been happy to interact with a Tory leader. Mr Cameron went on to note her outdoors pursuits. Hearing of a peak called the Inaccessible Pinnacle, Mrs Cox had not just climbed it but had also abseiled down it, ‘despite a case of bad morning sickness’.
The Cox family, upstairs, smiled fondly at this story.
Rachel Reeves (Lab, Leeds W) was first backbencher to speak and dissolved as she reached her conclusion.
It might be possible to elect a new MP, she said, but ‘no one can replace a mother’.
As Ms Reeves resumed her seat, her shoulders heaving, her neighbour Wes Streeting (Ilford N) slipped an arm round her shoulder.
THe DUP’s Nigel Dodds quoted the Old Testament (Isaiah, 61:3) as only an Ulsterman can. Stephen Doughty (Lab, Cardiff S) recalled that when working in Brussels, Mrs Cox had given Peter Mandelson a hard time.
‘He quickly had to adapt his approach,’ said Doughty, creating a moment of welcome comic relief as MPs relished the image of polished Peter having his ankles chased by the diminutive terrier Cox.
And the speech of Stephen Kinnock (Lab, Aberavon), who shared an office with Mrs Cox, throbbed with politics as he attacked Nigel Farage. Suitable? This was the Commons. It is and must be a place for political speeches. ‘When insecurity, fear and anger are used to light a fuse, an explosion is inevitable,’ claimed Mr Kinnock.
Yet will public anger not also explode if it is ignored?