Jo Cox’s children hear tributes in Parliament
The young children of Jo Cox were in the House of Commons to hear emotional tributes paid to their mother as Parliament was recalled four days after the murder of the Labour MP in a street attack in her West Yorkshire constituency. Her three-year-old daughter sat on her father Brendan’s lap, while their son, five, snuggled up to his grandmother in the gallery overlooking the chamber. A fund set up in Mrs Cox’s memory has topped £1 million.
Ihad never seen the Commons so full. Every seat was taken. Every seat, that is, but one. Two rows behind the Labour front bench was a single empty space. Empty, except for two roses. A white rose, to symbolise Yorkshire. And a red rose, to symbolise Labour. Together, they symbolised Jo Cox. Parliament had been recalled to mourn the MP for Batley & Spen, murdered in the streets of her West Yorkshire seat on Thursday.
As we filed into the press gallery, we were met by a sound normally unknown to the chamber. Silence. Below us, MPs sat, ashen and drained, every one of them wearing a white rose above their heart. Some bowed their heads; others looked up. Up, to the public gallery, to see Jo Cox’s grieving family. Brendan, her husband; their children, aged five and three and her parents. They gazed down, at the scores of MPs gazing up.
Imagine being them. Imagine being them, at that moment.
The silence was broken by John Bercow, the Speaker. The House was meeting, he intoned, in “heartbreaking sadness, but also in heartfelt solidarity”.
He called on Jeremy Corbyn. “Jo Cox,” said the Labour leader, “did not just believe in loving her neighbour. She believed in loving her neighbour’s neighbour. She saw a world of neighbours and she believed that every life counted equally.”
David Cameron marvelled at Mrs Cox’s “irrepressible spirit and boundless energy” – not just in her work but in her life outside politics. She had been a keen climber, he said, recalling an expedition she’d taken on the Isle of Skye.
“When most people hear of a place called the Inaccessible Pinnacle, they leave it well alone,” he said. “Not Jo. She didn’t just climb it; she abseiled down it, and did so despite a bad case of morning sickness.” The mood was lifted, for a moment, with fond laughter.
Harriet Harman, Labour’s former deputy leader, remembered Jo Cox bringing her baby son to a briefing – “and she literally didn’t stop kissing him all the way through the meeting”.
Holly Lynch, Labour MP for Halifax, said that her friend Anna Turley (Lab, Redcar) had described Mrs Cox best “as a comet.
“Burning brightly, lighting up the dark, awe-inspiring, giving off sparks of heat, light and positive energy.”
Stuart Andrew, Tory MP for Pudsey, expressed his admiration for “a proud Yorkshire lass”. His notes trembled in his hands. Around the chamber, MPs – battle-hardened MPs, weathered schemers, flinty veterans – dabbed their cheeks with tissues and held hands. The Prime Minister was seen to wipe a tear from his eye.
For some, it was too much. Rachel Reeves – also a West Yorkshire Labour MP, and a friend of Mrs Cox’s for 10 years – fought her way through to the end of her speech, and then broke in its final line. “Last,” she said, “let me say this. Batley & Spen will go on to elect a new MP, but no one …” Her face crumpled. Her voice faltered. “…No one can replace a mother.” She wilted to her seat. Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, clasped her hand and placed an arm around her shoulder.
So far, the speeches had been personal, not political. Stephen Kinnock – Labour MP for Aberavon, and a family friend – decided that in this case the political was personal too.
Mrs Cox, he declared, had been “assassinated” because of “what she stood for: hope not fear, respect not hate, unity not division”. He brought up the anti-EU poster launched by Nigel Farage mere hours before Mrs Cox was killed: the one depicting a
vast line of refugees, beside a warning: “BREAKING POINT”.
“I can only imagine Jo’s reaction,” said Mr Kinnock. “A poster on the streets of Britain that demonised hundreds of desperate refugees, including hungry, terrified children, fleeing from the terror of Isis [Isil] and from Russian bombs. She would have responded with outrage, and with a robust rejection of the calculated narrative of cynicism, division and despair that it represents.
“Because Jo understood that rhetoric has consequences. When insecurity, fear and anger are used to light a fuse, an explosion is inevitable.”
He wasn’t shouting, but his voice was cold with fury. “It is the politics of division and fear,” he went on, “the harking back to incendiary slogans and rhetoric of Britain First, that twists patriotism from love of country into an ugly loathing of others. We must now stand for something better – because of someone better.”
He hadn’t mentioned the EU referendum by name. But he was, inescapably, damning a piece of proBrexit campaigning. I looked across the chamber to where Michael Gove was sitting, and further across to Boris Johnson. Their expressions could not be read.
After an hour, John Bercow rose. “There is a tribute motion,” he said, “and I have to put the question – but I hope that when I do so, it will attract the loudest unified response in the history of this House. The question is that this House has considered the matter of tributes to Jo Cox. As many as are of that opinion, say aye.”
MPs did not say aye. They bellowed it, “AYE!”, at the top of their lungs.
And then – spontaneously, and against the conventions of the House – someone began to applaud. Then others applauded, and others, till every MP was on his or her feet, and then everyone in the press gallery, and everyone in the public gallery – all, thunderously, applauding. Once again, MPs gazed up to where the Coxes sat. Together, the MPs filed out, to attend a remembrance service at St Margaret’s Church, in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, across the road. Their singing was so loud, it could be heard back in Parliament.