Britain has still not recovered from the divisions stoked by the Brexit vote almost ten years after Jo Cox’s death, the murdered MP’s sister has warned.
Kim Leadbeater issued the warning after scenes of violence across the UK, including in Belfast where rioters set homes, a bus and cars on fire, with people targeted based on their race.
In an interview with The Independent ahead of the 10th anniversary of his Ms Cox’s killing, Ms Leadbeater said: “I think what we saw through Brexit, people were pushed into camps.
“People were made to see people who disagreed with them as their enemies rather than their neighbours – and I don’t think we’ve ever fully recovered from that.”
Ms Leadbeater, now a Labour MP, said she was still “very, very angry” over her sibling’s death, but called on the country to remember Ms Cox’s poignant call that we have “more in common” than divides us.
She said: “We’ve got to keep working hard to understand that you might disagree with somebody about something. But that doesn’t mean that you have to hate them.”
Ms Cox was shot and stabbed in her constituency of Batley and Spen by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair on 16 June 2016 – days before the EU referendum – in a murder that shocked the world.
Campaigning in the Brexit referendum was temporarily suspended. Tributes poured in for the MP, with many highlighting the message she gave during her first speech in Parliament when she said: “We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us”.
Her sister’s rallying cry does not mean avoiding “passionate, robust political debates”, said Ms Leadbeater, who became an MP in 2021 and represents the same constituency in the House of Commons her sister once held. But it was possible to have them “without treating each other like enemies”. “Because our political opponents are not our enemies,” she said.
She also hit out at those “preying on people’s genuine fears and concerns” in the wake of the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton and the horrific knife attack in Belfast in which victim Stephen Ogilvie lost an eye.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has come under fire for calling for “pure cold rage” in response to Mr Novak’s death. Deputy prime minister David Lammy also condemned US vice president JD Vance after he claimed an “invasion of migrants” in Europe was to blame, despite Mr Nowak’s killer Vickrum Digwa being born and raised in Britain.
Ms Leadbeater said everyone with a public role, including politicians, had a duty to behave responsibly. She added: “I think, at times, we’re not seeing that done very well – whether that’s by some people in this country or some people in other countries.”
She added: “Particularly when you have got families who have expressly said, ‘please don’t use what’s happened to our family as a way of dividing people, because that isn’t what we want to see’.” Both Mr Nowak’s and Mr Ogilvie’s family have called for calm in the face of the violent protests.
That was “exactly what we did” after her sister was killed, she said.
“It would be very easy for me to have used the anger that I felt – and believe me, I am very, very angry about what’s happened to my life – to sow division,” she added.
“I think we have to show a different way, and sadly, as I say, from some quarters – from people who’ve got a huge reach and a big audience – we’re not always seeing responsible behavior.”
She said she had a policy that “I don’t name anybody when I talk about these things. I don’t think that’s necessarily helpful. Some people want you to give them oxygen, and that isn’t what I want to do.”
But she added: “I think I think it’s fair to say there are definitely some people and some individuals who know exactly what they’re doing and are intentionally sowing division. But what they’re doing as part of that is preying on people’s genuine fears and concerns.”
Ms Leadbeater also expressed fears that the violence seen in Belfast and Southampton could spread this summer.
“We’ve all got to think about what we want this summer to look like. And I want this summer to be full of the World Cup, barbecues, people going out and having a wonderful time,” she said.
“I do not want this summer to be full of people being burned out of their homes and masked people running down the streets setting fire to things and attacking the police. I would strongly encourage everybody to choose the former rather than the latter.”
The Jo Cox Foundation is holding the Great Get Together weekend between the 19 – 21 of June, which it says will be a powerful way to remember her message, 10 years on.
