Jo Cox: 'overwhelming complacency for democracy in politics,' warns husband of murdered MP

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post ahead of the 10th anniversary of Ms Cox’s horrific murder, Mr Cox said his wife “would not quite believe that we had got to this point”.

The 47-year-old, who co-founded the Together Coalition and More in Common, which was named after Ms Cox’s famous maiden speech in Parliament, referenced the recent violence in Belfast and far-right marches on the streets of London.

“There is an overwhelming complacency in politics that is not addressing it and is allowing this to fester and to grow. I think she would be aghast at that.”

However, Mr Cox said his wife would “also be optimistic”.

“She would have a deep and abiding sense that British people are good, sensible people, obviously Yorkshire people in particular,” he said.

“But she would have a real genuine optimism that this doesn’t represent people, and therefore it is the systems that are allowing this to happen.”

He said if she was still the MP for Batley and Spen she would “maintain her optimism by trying to bring a voice back to the ordinary people of the country, and try and take it away from the most extreme and most divisive voices”.

The pair met while working at Oxfam in the mid 2000s and married in 2009, and Mr Cox remembers “our plan was to spend a bit of time in a series of countries around the world, particularly focusing on civil conflict”.

This took the pair to Darfur and Afghanistan, before in 2013 they decided to focus their campaigning back home in the UK.

“While we had spent most of our lives up until then very internationally orientated, it felt that there was a risk to what was happening in the UK that we had a particular responsibility to,” Mr Cox said.

“At that stage we both orientated our careers back to UK focused work, with Jo as a Member of Parliament. It came as a result of a growing anxiety and concern about the direction of British politics.”

He remembers Ms Cox as “incredibly proud when she was elected”, increasing Labour’s majority in Batley and Spen to 6,051.

“Then going back and telling the kids what had happened. She was elated to be able to serve,” Mr Cox said.

“It wasn’t about some extra letters after her name, it was about serving the community that was from and trying to make an impact on it.”

Ms Cox was “incredibly proud” of Yorkshire and “she always said she would only represent the seat that she was from”, her husband said.

“It’s where she felt she belonged and it’s where she felt she could authentically represent people that she knew.

“It’s obviously an awful shame because that wasn’t longer.

“She was somebody that had a huge energy, a real zest for life, a sense of belief in her community. That’s probably more important than her politics.”

Mr Cox remembers his wife coming home after campaigning in the constituency “and she had knocked on the door of a guy who had not spoken to anyone for a few days”.

He said it was “an older guy who was clearly very lonely, and she came home and she was moved to tears about it, she was incredibly empathetic”.

Ms Cox’s campaigning on this in the year she was an MP led to the UK having the first minister for loneliness in the world.

“We miss her determination,” Mr Cox.

Ultimately, she would have wanted her legacy to be the success of her children Cuillin, 15, and Lejla, 13, Mr Cox said.

“The things she would have been most focused on are her kids, and how proud she would have been of them and how they are doing in life,” he added.

“And then that ‘more in common’ message and how we turn that from being a sound bite into a way of doing politics and engaging with each other.

“While she was a politician at the end of her life, that wasn’t her identity - she was someone that cared about her community, she was an activist that did stuff.

“I think she would be encouraging us all to take some responsibility to step forward and cherish what we’ve got in common, and not obsess about the things where we disagree with each other.”