Remain camp is accused of new low over Jo Cox death
A REMAIN campaign leader was branded cynical yesterday for apparently urging activists to respond to Jo Cox’s death by saying Brexit backers created ‘division and resentment’.
Will Straw, Stronger In’s campaign director, said in a conference call on Sunday that voters had been ‘pulled up short’ by the killing of the Batley and Spen MP.
He told supporters to respond to the ‘new context that we’re in’ by highlighting that their side represents a ‘decent, tolerant’ Britain.
Last night Leave sources said the comments were ‘deeply cynical’. And Vote Leave board member Suzanne Evans, former Ukip deputy leader, said: ‘Yes, they stooped that low. Don’t let them win.’
On Sunday Mr Straw shared Mrs Cox’s final article – which urged Britons to vote to remain – and told supporters to share it widely on Facebook.
A recording of the conference call emerged yesterday on the Guido Fawkes website. In the call, Mr Straw said: ‘We need to recognise that people have been pulled up short by Jo Cox’s death and it is now time to make a very positive case for why we want to be in the European Union… to call out the other side for what they have done to stir division and resentment in the UK.
‘That is something we must all do… This is what we think is the closing argument of the campaign, reflecting all the arguments that we have been setting out for many months but also the new context that we’re in.
‘What we want to say is people should vote Remain on Thursday for more jobs, lower prices, workers’ rights, stronger public services and a decent, tolerant United Kingdom.’
Nigel Farage yesterday accused the Remain camp of trying to take advantage of Mrs Cox’s death.
The Ukip leader said: ‘What we’re seeing here is the Prime Minister and Remain campaign trying to conflate the actions of one crazed individual with the motives of half of Britain who think we should get back control of our borders and do it sensibly.’
Mrs Cox’s friend, Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, wrote yesterday that the fight to defend her legacy would begin on the day of the referendum.
‘To secure her legacy we must not only honour the values by which she lived, we must also follow through on them,’ he wrote in The Guardian.
‘We must unite and act to defeat the forces of division, intolerance, populism, nationalism and cynicism that have been bubbling under for years, and that have come to the fore in recent weeks.
‘This will be a long and diffi cult journey, but we owe it to Jo to make it. And it’s a journey that starts on Thursday.’
In Commons tributes to Mrs Cox yesterday, Mr Kinnock said she had been ‘assassinated because of who she was and what she stood for’. He also said she would have been appalled by Mr Farage’s poster, unveiled hours before her death, that showed a queue of refugees under the title ‘Breaking Point’.
He said: ‘She would have responded with outrage and with a robust rejection of the calculated narrative of cynicism and despair that it represents. Jo understood that rhetoric has consequences.
‘When insecurity, fear and anger are used to light a fuse, then an explosion is inevitable.’
Labour MP Jess Phillips told Channel 4 News it would be ‘wrong’ to link Ukip’s poster to Mrs Cox’s death, but said: ‘It’s part of the same hatred that killed my friend.’
But former Tory defence secretary Liam Fox, who backs Brexit, said using the tragedy for campaigning purposes ‘is extremely poor taste and morally unacceptable’ to the public.
Britain Stronger in Europe said Mr Straw was ‘reflecting on the changed circumstances’ as the final days of the campaign would be ‘in the shadow of that awful crime’.
David Cameron says he has been talking to his children Nancy and Elwyn about the vote. He said: ‘Nancy stole all of my “Stronger In” badges out of my box last night and took them off to school, so she’s quite passionate about it.’
‘They stooped that low’