Jo Cox’s killing has stunned the nation. A new MP, passionate about her job, her family and her children, is gunned down at a surgery where she is trying to help people.
Every one of us must have our hearts broken. The worst of it is imagining, or trying to imagine, the pain of her little ones, just three and five.
Jo was just 41. She was a woman in the prime of her life, a politician of great promise.
I loved the tribute to her paid by Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP who worked with her on the all-party group for Syria.
MPs put themselves in more peril serving the public than the tabloids like to report. Mental illness is often a factor in the dangers MPs face.
Andrew Mitchell: Jo Cox was "a five-foot tall bundle of energy, happiness, laughter and deep commitment" https://t.co/oq9ADrVGMV
— Sky News Tonight (@SkyNewsTonight) June 16, 2016
In 2010, Stephen Timms, another Labour MP, was stabbed in the stomach and nearly killed by a constituent obsessed with the Iraq war.
I had death threats to my children while I was an MP, including phone calls and emails, enclosing a cover of the book “Sophie’s Choice,” asking me which of my children should die.
Rape and death threats are common on social media but not all are to be taken seriously; threaten my children and I call the police. The troll they hunted down and arrested, one Mr. Zimmerman, lived in a filthy hovel and had clear mental health problems, but a court-appointed doctor found him competent to stand trial. He was given a probation sentence.
Once the police found the man, I felt it was entirely up to the justice system, including mental health doctors, to determine his competence and sentence.
Mr. Zimmerman suffered from grandiose fantasies and had stalked other women. I came to his attention over the hacking investigation by our select committee but I would not have dreamed for a second of blaming his stalking on, say, Hacked Off.
The fact that Jo Cox was brutally killed and taken from her young, loving family is an assault on the nation.
"We can't let the actions of one man destroy that link between the community and their MPs"#JoCox https://t.co/FaV6vQiyrz
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) June 17, 2016
Andrew’s tribute mentioned that over 70 MPs have reported threats to them, many arising from mental illness. Almost every MP has these stories.
The very day after my election I was visited in my office by a constituent who was clearly paranoid and delusional. I did not know that when I agreed to see him.
I used to tell this story partly as a joke, because it involved things that seemed amusing back then. Today it does not seem funny. My children then were the age of Jo Cox’s children today.
On another occasion I recall a staffer of mine, a young lad, had himself gone to the flat of a constituent who thought he was the President of the World.
I told him off like I was his mother; I was very worried for his safety; what if something had happened to him? Such calls were to be referred to social services not to him, I said. MPs’ staff can also be in great danger.
Andrew Pennington, an MP’s staffer, lost his life when constituent Robert Ashman brought a sword to the office and stabbed him. Ashman was first found mentally unfit to be tried but eventually was tried and admitted manslaughter of Pennington. He was convicted of attempted murder of his boss, Nigel Jones MP, a Lib Dem.
Jo’s loss is something that all of us in the UK must feel and our politics is irrelevant. Far, far too many on the Remain side of the Referendum have, however, used Cox’s tragic death for political point scoring.
Her attacker, Thomas Mair, may or may not have shouted “put Britain first.” One alleged eyewitness denied ever hearing him shout it. Another, cited as definitively saying so, was far less clear in her local paper, saying he shouted “what sounded like” that phrase. It is reported that one Thomas Mair, 10 years ago, subscribed to a racist magazine.
But, more clearly, Mair had distinct, long-established mental health problems. He had had treatment for it; he was on medication.
He attended Pathways Day Centre for adults with mental illness. He did volunteer gardening for the elderly. He had a mixed-race brother of whom he was fond, according to his family, who said he never expressed political or racist views.
Archive: Jo Cox's maiden speech in the Commons in 2015 https://t.co/aTwtMC8e7Xhttps://t.co/yIg5xWLgzh
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 16, 2016
Mair clearly had undergone treatment for some time. Of his volunteer work, he told his local paper that it “beats all the psychotherapy and medication in the world.”
The fact is Jo Cox’s killer may have been “a racist” online or subscribed to such magazines. He may have shouted “Britain First” or “Britain first” or other slogans. But if the other reports are also true then this is not relevant.
He was severely mentally ill and had been treated over a long period of time, certainly for longer than five years, given that his quote is from 2011 and clearly refers to ongoing treatment.
It is beyond disgusting, then, to use this man’s mental collapse and psychological unsoundness as a weapon in a political campaign. Let the doctors weigh in before we ascribe any part of this to ordinary politics.
The vile tone of Polly Toynbee and Alex Massie, whose piece in the Spectator has been altered post-hoc after a huge online backlash, is indefensible. The BBC News Twitter feed last night had not ONE SINGLE tweet about Mair’s mental illness, but plenty over whether he shouted “put Britain first” or not.
Campaigners like The Independent have not hesitated to make political capital.
Many have a menacing picture of Mair in what look like combat fatigues. It is a cropped picture. The full picture shows Mair is wearing a camouflage jacket and big red gardening gloves, sitting on a park bench with a pair of secateurs. He was just gardening:
The exact same bastions of the regressive left who rightly demanded that the Orlando massacre not be blamed on Muslims have not hesitated to try to pin this brutal killing on Brexit campaigners, who are fighting a strong, just and non-racist campaign for Britain to leave the EU.
I can only pray that they do not succeed in their frankly wicked attempt to use public grief over Jo Cox in this way.
If her killer was indeed a sufferer of severe long term mental illness then any racist tendencies are beside the point. It is being reported now that he was a neo-Nazi who had bought explosives manuals and books on how to make bombs and had done so for years – LONG before an EU Referendum was even thought of.
His psychopathy therefore had precisely nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit. Will the Remain trolls apologise to the rest of us?
What his surface motivation was – whatever thought arose in his addled mind – is wholly unimportant. Mair’s hatred was real, but only doctors and the courts can determine *why* he hated Jo.
A vigil has taken place in #Birstall tonight to remember Jo Cox MP. Every pew was full. https://t.co/lDQwpX5xgihttps://t.co/c2kjNEOvZR
— BBC Look North (Yks) (@BBCLookNorth) June 16, 2016
What mattes for justice is the level of his mental competence. What matters for the safety of our MPs and our democracy is that we review their safety during surgeries, which I am now inclined to think should take place in secure locations, perhaps a room in a local police station. Too many MPs and their staff have been killed or wounded trying to help others.
And while we celebrate and honour the work of Jo Cox, that work took place as a politician. Jo’s life shows how much politics matters. Our politics matters hugely.
Her death at the hands of a mentally ill and violent constituent cannot and must not derail the national debate between decent and civilized people over Britain’s future, a debate in which she proudly took part.
The Vote Leave campaign bears no responsibility – none – not the tiniest sliver – for any part of what happened to Jo Cox MP, and neither do its supporters. Anybody suggesting that at this grief-stricken moment should be treated with the most profound contempt.
Nobody should allow themselves to be bullied by such repellent politcising of an MP’s death and of mental illness. We will honour Jo’s political commitment not by aping her beliefs but by fighting hard for what we, ourselves, believe to be the right thing.
