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History > 2016 > UK > Politics (I)
From Great Britain to Little England
SundayReview | Opinion NYT
By NEAL ASCHERSON JUNE 16, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/sunday/from-great-britain-to-little-england.html
David Cameron resigns
after UK votes to leave European Union
PM announces resignation
following victory for leave supporters
after divisive referendum campaign
Friday 24 June 2016
10.44 BST
Last modified on Friday 24 June 2016
14.11 BST
The Guardian
Heather Stewart,
Rowena Mason and Rajeev Syal
David Cameron has resigned, bringing an abrupt end to his
six-year premiership, after the British public took the momentous decision to
reject his entreaties and turn their back on the European Union.
Just a year after he clinched a surprise majority in the general election, a
visibly emotional Cameron, standing outside Number 10 on Friday morning
alongside his wife, Samantha, said: “The will of the British people is an
instruction that must be delivered.”
The prime minister campaigned hard in the divisive referendum on Britain’s
relationship with the EU, appearing at hundreds of public events up and down the
country to argue that Brexit would be an act of “economic self-harm”.
But a frustrated electorate used the poll to reject the status quo and, as the
Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, described it, “stick two fingers up” at Britain’s
politicians.
“I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and
better off inside the EU. I made clear the referendum was about this, and this
alone, not the future of any single politician, including myself.
“But the British people made a different decision to take a different path. As
such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this
direction,” Cameron said.
Nicola Sturgeon says second Scottish referendum 'highly likely' – as it happened
The prime minister’s team were left shocked and distraught by the narrow win for
leave, with 52% of the vote, after polls had suggested a move towards a
comfortable margin for remain in the final few days of campaigning.
In the statement announcing his intention to step down, Cameron highlighted the
key achievements of his premiership, including rebuilding the economy after the
financial crisis and legislating to allow gay marriage.
The process of choosing his successor will now begin, with Tory MPs selecting a
two-person shortlist, which will then be presented to the party’s members in the
country to make a final decision.
Cameron called the referendum as a calculated gamble, aimed at silencing the
Eurosceptics in his own party for a generation.
Yet he had underestimated the backing Vote Leave would receive on his own
backbenches; and reckoned without the charismatic and popular former mayor of
London, Boris Johnson, becoming its figurehead.
Johnson, whose support among the Tory membership shot up after he declared
himself for out, is now widely seen as the most likely successor to the prime
minister.
The former mayor of London insisted on Friday there was “no need for haste” in
negotiating Britain’s exit. Speaking at Vote Leave’s headquarters, Johnson
struck a statesmanlike tone, paying tribute to Cameron’s leadership. “This does
not mean that the UK will be in any way less united; nor indeed does it mean
that it will be any less European,” he said.
Michael Gove, speaking alongside Johnson, said representatives from all parts of
Britain, and from different political traditions, should be involved in the
negotiations.
Cameron said it would be best for his successor to negotiate the terms of
Britain’s exit – and to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which begins
the formal process of withdrawal, adding that he had already discussed his
intentions with the Queen.
The prime minister promised to stay on until the autumn, to “steady the ship”;
but suggested a new leader should be in place by the start of the Conservative
party’s conference in October.
Other leading Brexiters may fancy their chances against Johnson, including
Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab.
Michael Gove, the justice secretary, has always strongly denied he wants the top
job but has consistently polled well in surveys of grassroots Conservatives in
recent months.
Party modernisers are likely to rally around an alternative candidate – perhaps
Theresa May, Stephen Crabb or Nicky Morgan – in an effort to stop Johnson and
other leave campaigners, who tend to be on the right of the party.
George Osborne’s chances of succeeding the prime minister are effectively over
after he fought so forcefully alongside Cameron to remain in the EU.
The scale of anger about the chancellor’s role in the campaign was laid bare
when more than 60 Tory MP said they would refuse to back the “Brexit budget” he
said would be necessary if Britain voted to leave.
A narrow victory for remain early in the night for Newcastle, which had been
expected to reject Brexit by a stronger margin, set the pattern for later
results. There was a sharp divide across Britain, with London and other major
cities, and Scotland, voting to remain in the EU, while smaller towns and more
deprived economic areas backed Brexit.
Cameron and Osborne – who were both closely involved in running the campaign –
wheeled out an array of global policymakers and experts, including the governor
of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the US president, Barack Obama, to make
the case that leaving the EU would inflict severe economic damage.
But Gove caught the public mood when he said the public had had enough of
“experts”.
The London stock market plunged at the start of trading at 8am on Friday, as a
wave of selling swept the City amid fears about the economic consequences of
Britain trying to survive outside the EU single market.
The FTSE 100 plunged by 550 points at one stage, a fall of 8.6%. But the
blue-chip index then stabilised, and is currently down 327 points, or 5.2%, at
6009 after Cameron’s statement.
The pound has clawed back from its worst lows, but is still down 7.5% at $1.375
against the US dollar. It has lost 13 cents since the polls closed on Thursday
night, when opinion polls suggested a remain victory.
A Whitehall source said the first priority for Cameron’s post-Brexit
administration was to steady the financial markets by ensuring that there would
be a smooth transition to a new prime minister.
To that end, there has already been “contact” between Downing Street with both
Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the source said. David Cameron is expected to
arrange a meeting with both, which “will be awkward to say the least”, within
the next 48 hours.
Cameron’s statement was expected to be delivered at 7am but it finally came
after 8.15am, a quarter of an hour after the markets opened. Labour will hold a
shadow cabinet meeting on Friday morning to calibrate its response.
David Cameron resigns after UK votes to leave European Union,
G, 24 June 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/
david-cameron-resigns-after-uk-votes-to-leave-european-union
If you inject enough poison
into the political bloodstream,
somebody will get sick
Friday 17 June 2016
13.54 BST
Last modified on Friday 17 June 2016
18.09 BST
Jonathan Freedland
For weeks, months and years “politician” has been a word more
spat out than said. MPs have been depicted as a form of pond life, routinely
placed on the lowest rung of the ladder of esteem, trusted less than estate
agents and journalists, the butt of every panel show gag, casually assumed to be
venal, mendacious, vain, stupid or malevolent.
“They’re all as bad as each other,” we say. “They’re only in it for themselves.”
“You can’t believe a word they say.” These complaints are repeated so often, we
barely notice them. They’re like moans about the weather, presumed to warrant no
disagreement.
But then we are confronted with the fate, and the life, of Jo Cox. We learn that
she was a devoted mother of two young children. We see the pictures of her
putting shoes on her daughter’s tiny feet. We hear that she fizzed with energy
and commitment to those suffering, far away and closer to home. We learn that
her friends loved her and hear them break down as they remember her. We see that
she burned with a fierce idealism, that she was devoted to her home town of
Batley, that she wanted to make life better for people other than herself.
And none of that quite fits with what we thought “politician” meant. Yet the
funny thing is, this is what most of them are actually like. It’s the dirty
little secret of political life: that, yes, there are some politicians who are
all about ego and vanity and hogging the camera; but there are countless more
who get and seek little public attention, who toil away, knocking on doors,
fielding complaints about broken drains and noisy neighbours, who work daytimes,
evenings and weekends, and who are rewarded by little thanks – and often a
downpour of abuse.
What accounts for this loathing of our elected public servants, the men and
women we have chosen to represent us? Some of it they bring upon themselves, to
be sure – and there’s no denying that the standing of MPs plummeted after the
expenses affair of 2009 (though they were hardly revered before then).
The media have certainly played their part. Think of the interviews conducted as
if every politician belongs automatically in the dock, interrogations that
proceed on a premise famously cited by Jeremy Paxman: why is this lying bastard
lying to me?
Social media has intensified this hostility and made it even more sharply
personal. The abuse directed at women – whether elected politicians or not – who
dare to voice an opinion in public, the threats of rape and murder: all of it
has further polluted the atmosphere.
We don’t yet know what was in the mind of the man who killed Jo Cox. Latest
reports suggest the suspect in the case had links to a neo-Nazi, white
supremacist group in the US. But even if we cannot locate a specific cause in
the nation’s political debate and claim this murder as its direct effect, we can
say this: that if you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream,
eventually somebody will get sick.
In the early 1990s I watched as it became a staple of US debate that all
America’s woes were the fault of the federal government. On the right, it became
incontestable to blame “government bureaucrats” for any and every problem. On
talk radio – the social media of that era – “government bureaucrats” were
assailed daily as the enemy, worthy only of contempt. And then, on 19 April
1995, Timothy McVeigh planted a bomb in a building in Oklahoma City filled with
government bureaucrats, and killed 168 people. Perhaps McVeigh was mentally
unstable, but that hardly weakens the point: even the mentally unstable hear the
conversation around them.
And how has our national conversation sounded in recent weeks? As it happens,
before Jo Cox was so brutally murdered I had a plan for the column I would write
today. Its headline was to be “Behold the demons we have unleashed”. It was to
convey my deep anxiety about the darker loathings stirred by the debate over
next week’s EU referendum.
It would have cited the violence in France involving English football fans, who
chanted the usual anti-French and anti-German songs but also “Fuck off, Europe –
we’re all voting out”.
It would have mentioned the incident, witnessed by a Financial Times
correspondent, in which England fans threw coins at child beggars in the
streets, enjoying the children’s humiliation as they bent down to pick them up.
The same fans made one seven-year-old boy down a bottle of beer to earn his
reward.
You could say those fans would always have behaved that way. But none of us is
an island. We take our cues from the signals around us. And the recent signals
have included a loathing of the European Union and a resistance to immigration
that is clearly heard by many as nothing more than hostility to foreigners.
The poster Nigel Farage unveiled on Thursday morning turned that dog-whistle
into a foghorn: under the phrase “Breaking Point”, it showed a snaking queue of
conspicuously dark men, suggesting these were EU migrants descending on Britain.
(In fact they were Syrian refugees arriving in Slovenia, with no chance of
getting anywhere near Britain.) It was unambiguously racist.
And throughout this campaign, there has been a drumbeat denouncing “the
Westminster elite”, castigating all politicians, along with anyone in authority
or in a public position of expertise, as either a liar or the corrupt dupe of a
wicked Brussels conspiracy.
Perhaps this had nothing to do with the cruelty that deprived two children of
their mother yesterday. Maybe it’s a coincidence that the killer struck at this
moment. Maybe it’s a coincidence that he targeted an MP who was a passionate
advocate of remaining inside the EU, and whose signature issue had been a
campaign to admit Syrians in desperate need of refuge.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that she was a member of a political class that has
been reviled for years and with heightened fervour in recent weeks. Maybe it’s a
coincidence that she was an advocate for a position depicted by its most fevered
opponents as unpatriotic and verging on treason.
We don’t yet know. But what we do know is that this campaign has torn away at a
fabric that took years to weave, one that ensured we could argue with each other
without challenging the basic legitimacy of our opponents, one that had grown to
accept diversity as a strength rather than a threat to be feared, one that
allowed us to keep calm and civil even when we disagreed passionately.
Whatever happens next Thursday, it will take time to repair that fabric. But
repair it we must. For what we have learned this week is that the veil that
separates civilisation from mayhem is thin. The tragedy is that it took the
death of a devoted, admired and adored woman to teach us that lesson.
If you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream,
somebody will get sick,
G, 17 June 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/17/
political-contempt-politicians-eu-referendum
From Great Britain to Little England
JUNE 16, 2016
The New York Times
By NEAL ASCHERSON
London — IT was Queen Elizabeth’s official 90th birthday
celebration last Sunday, and tables for 10,000 guests were set along the Mall in
central London. Steadily the rain fell, dripping out of the tubas of the bands
and softening the sandwiches, but Her Majesty’s subjects munched on with stoic
British spirit, standing up to cheer as she passed.
In her fuchsia coat and matching hat, she waved and grinned as if nothing had
changed and never would. But next week, a very great change may come.
On Thursday, Britons will vote in a referendum on whether their country should
stay in the European Union or leave it. If a majority opts for “Brexit,” a long
earthquake begins. It will topple the old facade of Britishness. It will
disrupt, perhaps mortally, the foundations of European unity. The sense of a
fateful moment suddenly peaked on Thursday, when, the police say, a young Labour
member of Parliament named Jo Cox was shot to death in her West Yorkshire
district by a man who is said to have shouted, “Put Britain first!” and to have
been involved in the white-supremacist National Alliance in the United States.
All campaigning was suspended for a day of appalled mourning, amid fears that
widespread anxiety about European immigration was being inflamed into violent
racialism. Ms. Cox was a rising star, admired in and outside Parliament for her
selfless energy on behalf of refugees and the poor. Her friends hope her death
may cool referendum passions, reminding sullen voters that “not all politicians
are in it for themselves.”
Royal ceremonies offer a brief, reassuring illusion of continuity, but at the
back of many minds on the Mall was this thought: Could we be saying goodbye not
just to this beloved old lady, but to a certain idea of nationhood? An
outward-looking, world-involved Great Britain may soon shrink into a Little
England.
As the queen’s guests finished their tea in sight of the familiar gray mass of
Buckingham Palace, opinion polls showed the Brexit vote surging. The early lead
for the Remain campaign has melted away. In less than a week, the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland could be tearing up its European treaties
and backing into Atlantic isolation.
The slogan “Take back control!” has been showing up everywhere in the last two
weeks. It’s about sovereignty: the idea that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels,
not the Westminster Parliament, make the laws of England. Above all, it means
taking control of the country’s frontiers. This would break decisively with a
sacred principle of the European Union: the free movement of people, which, for
more than 20 years under the Schengen Agreement, has allowed Europeans to travel
among member states without passport checks, and live and work in those
countries with no visa requirements.
With fateful timing, the latest official figures for net migration to Britain,
published at the end of May, showed the second-highest annual number on record,
333,000 in 2015; European Union nations accounted for more than half of that
figure. This was far higher than government targets, and played directly into
the Leave campaign’s refrain about “uncontrolled immigration.”
Is it a baseless panic? Many European countries tolerate far higher levels of
immigration. Scotland, with a new community of some 55,000 Poles, actively
encourages it. In England, support for Brexit and for the xenophobic U.K.
Independence Party is often in inverse proportion to the scale of the problem:
The fewer immigrants there are in a town, the louder the outcry against
foreigners. In contrast, polling in inner London, where about four out of 10
inhabitants are now foreign-born, shows a clear preference for staying in
Europe. By chance, Ms. Cox’s killing fell on the same day that UKIP unveiled a
poster titled “Breaking Point?” It shows a mass of black and brown refugees
pouring toward a frontier. With grief still raw, there has been widespread
revulsion at the poster, now reported to the police on grounds of “incitement to
racial hatred.”
The English, normally skeptical about politics, have grown gullible. Both sides
pelt the voters with forecasts of doom should the other side win. None are
reliable, and the Leave figures have been especially deceitful. Remainers
predict an economic armageddon of lost growth, a devalued pound and withered
City of London. The Leavers’ Conservative leaders, assuming the mantle of a
government in waiting, promise that “their” Britain could cover all the lost
European subsidies and grants to farmers, poor regions, universities and
schools. Evidence that they could find these additional billions is scant.
But there are deeper motives here than anxiety about the exchange rate or banks
in London decamping to Frankfurt. Behind Brexit stalks the ghost of imperial
exception, the feeling that Great Britain can never be just another nation to be
outvoted by France or Slovakia. There’s still a providential feeling about
Shakespeare’s “sceptred isle” as “this fortress built by Nature.” Or as an old
Royal Marines veteran said to me, “God dug the bloody Channel for us, so why do
we keep trying to fill it in?”
But in a Britain after Brexit, there will be internal border issues to worry
about. London politicians look nervously north toward Scotland. Home to less
than 10 percent of Britain’s population, Scotland has enjoyed a high degree of
self-government since 1999. The pro-independence Scottish National Party
dominates the country’s politics, consolidating its grip after losing a
close-fought independence referendum in 2014.
Most Scots insist that they want to stay in the European Union. So what happens
if a British majority says Leave and Scotland is dragged out of Europe against
its will?
Many nationalists will demand an immediate new independence referendum. But
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s shrewd and popular first minister, will want to wait
until polls show a settled majority of Scottish voters in favor of leaving the
British state. It’s Ms. Sturgeon’s gamble that an economic downturn following
Brexit, combined with the loss of European Union guarantees for workers’ rights
and European subsidies for Scotland’s farmers and infrastructure projects, will
deliver that support soon enough.
If Ms. Sturgeon’s strategy works out, Brexit could hasten the breakup of
Britain. The constitutional fallout extends to Northern Ireland. A Leave vote
would turn the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic into a
guarded frontier with Europe, since Ireland would remain a member in the union.
This would undermine a major provision of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the
peace deal that ended three decades of the Troubles.
Her Britannic Majesty would then be left with a simmering Ulster, the potential
for resurgent nationalism in Wales, and a dominant population of 54 million
English people. There is a logic to that, for Brexit is overwhelmingly an
English, not a British, idea.
English nationalism, though inchoate, is spreading. For older generations, it
was cloaked in British patriotism. But now, having watched the Scots and the
Welsh win their own parliaments, England — with no less than 84 percent of
Britain’s population — feels aggrieved and unrepresented. And so the English
have gone in search of their own identity politics, finding common cause with
the general impatience with old political elites that is flaming up all over
Europe.
For now, their angry sense of powerlessness is aimed at the European Union. But
the truth is that it’s from bloated, privileged London, not Brussels, that the
English need to take back control. The Brexit campaign orators, themselves
members of that metropolitan elite, have carefully diverted English fury into
empty foreigner-baiting. In France this month, English soccer hooligans’ chant
was “We’re all voting Out!” as they beat up fans from other nations.
A rump Britain that quits the European Union would not be the same country back
in its old familiar place. It would be a new, strange country in an unfamiliar
place.
For foreigners, it would be less easygoing, more suspicious and more
bureaucratic for work and travel. For its own citizens, it would become a less
regulated, more unequal society. For the young, as European color drained away,
it could come to seem a dim and stifling place that anyone with imagination
would want to escape.
A Leave victory in the referendum is expected to topple Prime Minister David
Cameron, and replace him with a radically right-wing Conservative team, which
the impetuous former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is eager to lead. The new
government would immediately have to face the problems of disengaging from
Europe, and possibly from Scotland. Negotiating new treaties with European
trading partners would take many years. And Germany is warning that Britain will
no longer have access to the European Union’s single market.
That would knock the bottom out of the Leave campaign’s central promise: that
Britain could have its cake and eat it, too — retaining full access to 500
million European customers while clamping controls on immigration from the
union. Cynics predict that Britain will spend five years trying to get out, and
the next five trying to get back in.
Then come the constitutional nightmares. Most lawmakers in Britain’s Parliament
are pro-Europe. Can they be forced to vote for legislation to leave the union?
What happens if the government loses an election and a pro-European
administration — say, a Labour-led coalition — takes power?
And who is supreme here, anyway? The British people, who will have expressed
their will in a binding referendum? Or Parliament, which by convention is
sovereign and cannot be overruled? In a kingdom with no written constitution,
nobody knows the answer.
It is certain that Brexit would do gross damage to both Europe and America. For
the United States, it would mean the failure of many years of diplomacy. Britain
would become at once less useful as an ally and less predictable. Washington
would turn increasingly from London to Berlin.
For Europe, Britain’s departure would be like a first brick pulled from a flimsy
wall. The union is already fragile. Its mismanagement of the eurozone debt
crisis after the 2008 crash was followed by its mismanagement of the refugee
crisis. No wonder a recent Pew Research Center poll showed plummeting approval
ratings for the union in key European countries.
British withdrawal isn’t likely to be followed instantly by that of other member
states. But nationalist governments like those in Poland and Hungary, and others
besides, will be encouraged to defy European rules from trade regulations to
human rights, until the whole structure disintegrates. Disputes once soothed by
multinational bargaining in Strasbourg or Brussels may grow toxic.
And Europe, though often vexed by London’s halfheartedness, will miss the sheer
negotiating skill of British diplomacy: its genius for avoiding confrontations
and inventing compromises. As more countries strike mutinous attitudes, those
skills have never been more needed.
“For 70 years, my Foreign Service has been Britain’s rear guard,” a British
ambassador told me. “We have prevented its orderly retreat from world greatness
turning into a rout.” But Brexit now seems to propose a final retreat across the
English Channel to the white cliffs of Dover.
Isolation brings out the worst in Britain. And it never works. In the 1930s, a
complacent Britain refused to help Spain fight fascism, appeased Hitler and
Mussolini, and for too long turned away refugees fleeing persecution. As
Czechoslovakia cried out for help, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dismissed
“a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” Will a
British leader soon speak again about faraway Europe in the same tones?
When Britain did admit that it belonged to Europe, after all, it was at the 11th
hour. In 1940, isolation ended in a fight for survival, and complacency gave way
to five years of grim determination. During those war years, the Continent was
devastated and its nation-states discredited.
Thanks to that harsh experience, the British after the war recognized their
share of responsibility by supporting the vision of a united Europe. Must
Britain learn that painful, costly lesson all over again?
Correction: June 17, 2016
An earlier version of this article misstated the site of Jo Cox’s killing. She
was attacked on the street after a meeting with constituents, not near her
office.
Neal Ascherson, a journalist, is the author of “Stone Voices: The Search for
Scotland.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion),
and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 19, 2016,
on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline:
From Great Britain to Little England.
From Great Britain to Little England,
NYT, June 16, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/
opinion/sunday/from-great-britain-to-little-england.html
Jo Cox obituary
Former Oxfam policy head
who became Labour MP
for Batley and Spen in 2015
Thursday 16 June 2016
20.41 BST
Last modified on Friday 17 June 2016
07.19 BST
The Guardian
Julia Langdon
The Labour MP Jo Cox, who has died aged 41 after being shot and
stabbed in her constituency of Batley and Spen, in West Yorkshire, was a woman
who in many ways represented the character and style of the modern Labour party.
She was widely viewed as someone who could have been a serious player in the
party in the years to come.
Cox combined academic achievement with political experience, but she threw into
the mix an understanding of the Labour movement, a profound concern for the
issues that affected the country and a personal heritage that qualified her for
a career on the frontbench.
Elected to the House of Commons last year, she was inordinately proud of winning
in her birthplace. She was born in Batley, one of two daughters of Gordon, a
cosmetics factory worker, and his wife, Jean, who was a school secretary. Jo
herself worked in the same factory as her father, packaging toothpaste during
the holidays, having gained a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she
took a degree in social and political studies.
In an interview she suggested that her experience at Heckmondwike grammar school
had not prepared her for life as an undergraduate at Cambridge. She readily
acknowledged that she had not grown up in a political tradition and she had no
understanding of how her birthplace and background would be viewed. “I didn’t
really speak right or know the right people,” she said. The experience was quite
startling for her, but it equipped her for her future: she would say later that
joining the Commons was like “a walk in the park” in comparison.
On graduating in 1995 she took the course of many future MPs by becoming a
political adviser. She worked for the former Labour MP Joan Walley, and then
after spells as head of key campaigns with Britain in Europe and for Glenys
Kinnock, then a member of the European parliament, she joined Oxfam in 2002.
There she worked as head of the EU office until 2005, of policy and advocacy
until 2007, and of humanitarian campaigning until 2009. In these posts she
acquired a view of international politics that would inform the rest of her life
and she always spoke powerfully about the experiences she had undergone and the
scenes she had witnessed.
Then she became director of the Maternal Mortality Campaign (2009-11), and
worked closely with Sarah Brown, the wife of the former Labour prime minister
Gordon Brown, another campaigner on that issue. Subsequently she worked for Save
The Children and the NSPCC, and was founder and chief executive of UK Women
(2013-14).
In the Commons she had established a reputation as an outspoken critic of the
lack of a strategic policy in Syria. She believed in the need for a credible
policy that protected the civilian population and abstained in the vote on air
strikes against Islamic State. She believed that there was a lack of what she
called a “moral compass” in British policy. She described the British approach
as “a masterclass in how not to do foreign policy” and argued strongly in favour
of allowing more refugees into the UK.
Cox was a modern Labour party feminist. She was selected for her seat from an
all-woman shortlist and from 2010 to 2014 chaired the Labour Women’s Network.
She campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights around the world and was an adviser
to the Freedom Fund on slavery (2014) and to the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (2014-15). In the Commons she was recognised as a woman who could
make a difference to other people’s lives and who wanted to change the world to
make it a better place.
She nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership last year – one of 36 Labour MPs
to do so – but subsequently herself voted for Liz Kendall, who came fourth in
the election. She was later criticised for an article in which she explained why
she had nominated Corbyn, but not voted for him. It did not damage her
reputation in parliament, where she was held to be one of the most popular and
potentially successful members of last year’s intake and a beacon for the Labour
party’s future.
In the way of people who have mountains to climb, she had pursued such a sport
herself. When elected to Westminster, however, her primary sporting activity was
cycling to work along the river Thames from the barge on which she lived with
her husband, Brendan Cox, and their two children, Lejla and Cuillin.
• Helen Joanne “Jo” Cox, politician, born 22 June 1974;
died 16 June 2016
Jo Cox obituary, G, 16 June 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/
jo-cox-obituary
The Guardian view on Jo Cox:
an attack on humanity,
idealism and democracy
Thursday 16 June 2016
18.25 BST
Last modified on Thursday 16 June 2016
23.55 BST
The Guardian
Editorial
The slide from civilisation to barbarism is shorter than we might
like to imagine. Every violent crime taints the ideal of an orderly society, but
when that crime is committed against the people who are peacefully selected to
write the rules, then the affront is that much more profound.
The killing, by stabbing and repeated shooting in the street, of Jo Cox is, in
the first instance, an exceptionally heinous villainy. She was the mother of two
very young children, who will now have to grow up without her. It is also,
however, in a very real sense, an attack on democracy. Violence against MPs in
Britain is mercifully rare. Only three have been killed in recent history: Airey
Neave, Tony Berry and Ian Gow, all of them at the hands of the Irish
republicans. Two others, Nigel Jones and Stephen Timms, have been grievously
wounded, the latter by a woman citing jihadi inspiration and rage about the Iraq
war. Whatever the cause, an attack on a parliamentarian is always an attack on
parliament as well, which was as clear in Thursday’s case as any before.
Here was the MP whom the citizens of Batley and Spen had entrusted to represent
them, fresh from conducting her duty to solve the practical problems of those
same citizens in a constituency surgery. To single her out, at this time and in
this place, is to turn a gun on every value of which decent Britons are
justifiably proud.
Jo Cox, however, was not just any MP doing her duty. She was also an MP who was
driven by an ideal. The former charity worker explained what that ideal was as
eloquently as anyone could in her maiden speech last year. “Our communities have
been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics
across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan,
principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me
time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more
united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be
comfortable in their difference? And what more fundamental tenet of decency is
there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to
what divides one group from another? These are ideals that are often maligned
when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless.
They are the ideals which led Ms Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised
and displaced people of Syria, and – the most painful thought – ideals for which
she may now have died.
The police are investigating reports that the assailant yelled “Britain First”
during the attack. If those words were used, this would appear to be not merely
a chauvinist taunt, but the name of a far-right political party, whose candidate
for City Hall turned his back in disgust on Sadiq Khan at the count, in
sectarian rage at a great cosmopolitan city’s decision to make a Muslim mayor.
The thuggish outfit denounced Ms Cox’s death, as it was bound to do. But their
brand of angry blame-mongering could very well serve to convince particular
individuals – especially those who are already close to the edge – that some
people are less than human, and thus fair game for attack. The rhetoric of
western racism and Islamophobia is the mirror of the ideology with which Isis
and al-Qaida secure their recruits and that persuades them to strap explosives
to themselves, and die in order to kill. It might be especially powerful in
Britain, at a time when divisive hate-mongering is seeping into the mainstream.
We are in the midst of what risks becoming a plebiscite on immigration and
immigrants. The tone is divisive and nasty. Nigel Farage on Thursday unveiled a
poster of unprecedented repugnance. The backdrop was a long and thronging line
of displaced people in flight. The message: “The EU has failed us all.” The
headline: “Breaking point.” The time for imagining that the Europhobes can be
engaged on the basis of facts – such as the reality that a refugee crisis that
started in Syria and north Africa can hardly be blamed on the EU, or the
inconvenient detail that obligations under the refugee convention do not depend
on EU membership – has passed. One might have still hoped, however, that even
merchants of post-truth politics might hold back from the sort of entirely
post-moral politics that is involved in taking the great humanitarian crisis of
our time, and then whipping up hostility to the victims as a means of chivvying
voters into turning their backs on the world.
The idealism of Ms Cox was the very antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour
her memory. Because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that
we have to keep barbarism at bay.
The Guardian view on Jo Cox:
an attack on humanity, idealism and democracy,
G, 16 June 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/
the-guardian-view-on-jo-cox-an-attack-on-humanity-idealism-and-democracy
The mood is ugly, and an MP is dead
The Guardian
Polly Toynbee
Thursday 16 June 2016
20.47 BST
Last modified on Friday 17 June 2016
03.57 BST
In an era when many question the validity of their elected
officials, Jo Cox stood out. She rose to represent the area in which she was
born. And she arrived at the Commons with hinterland, a career campaigning for
Oxfam, Save the Children and the NSPCC. On Thursday, shock among MPs was
palpable.
This attack on a public official cannot be viewed in isolation. It occurs
against a backdrop of an ugly public mood in which we have been told to despise
the political class, to distrust those who serve, to dehumanise those with whom
we do not readily identify.
There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s
withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in
democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and
shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for
the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the
dogwhistling and the overt racism.
It’s been part of a noxious brew, with a dangerous anti-politics and anti-MP
stereotypes fomented by leave and their media backers mixed in. Only an hour
before this shooting Nigel Farage unveiled a huge poster showing Syrian refugees
fleeing to Slovenia last year, nothing to do with EU free movement – and none
arriving here. Leave’s poster read: “Breaking Point. We must break free from the
EU and take control of our borders.” Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas and many
others condemned it as “disgusting”, and so it is.
At a ward meeting this week my local Labour councillor in Camden, north London,
showed us a sign that had been left on a member’s car windscreen. The car had a
remain poster on it and was parked round the corner from where I live. This is
what the message said, printed in capitals (I’ve left the original spelling):
“This is a lave [leave] area. We hate the foriner. Nex time do not park your car
with remain sign on. Hi Hitler. White Power” – accompanied by racist symbols.
The car’s owner had passed it on to the police.
Rude, crude, Nazi-style extremism is mercifully rare. But the leavers have
lifted several stones. How recklessly the decades of careful work and
anti-racist laws to make those sentiments unacceptable have been overturned.
This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to
the far fringes of British politics
This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to
outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister,
Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former
London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner
sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. Ted Heath expelled
Enoch Powell from the Tory front ranks for it. Oswald Mosley was ejected from
his party for it. Gove and Grayling remain in the cabinet.
When politicians from a mainstream party use immigration as their main weapon in
a hotly fought campaign, they unleash something dark and hateful that in all
countries always lurks not far beneath the surface.
Did we delude ourselves we were a tolerant country – or can we still save our
better selves? Over recent years, struggling to identify “Britishness”, to
connect with a natural patriotic love of country that citizens have every right
to feel, politicians floundering for a British identity reach for the reassuring
idea that this cradle of democracy is blessed with some special civility.
But if the vote is out, then out goes that impression of what kind of country we
are. Around the world we will be seen as the island that cut itself off as a
result of anti-foreigner feeling: that will identify us globally more than any
other attribute. Our image, our reality, will change overnight.
Contempt for politics is dangerous and contagious, yet it has become a
widespread default sneer. There was Jo Cox, a dedicated MP, going about her
business, doing what good MPs do, making herself available to any constituents
with any problems to drop in to her surgery. Just why she became the victim of
such a vicious attack, we may learn eventually. But in the aftermath of her
death, there are truths of which we should remind ourselves right now.
Democracy is precious and precarious. It relies on a degree of respect for the
opinions of others, soliciting support for political ideas without stirring up
undue savagery and hatred against opponents. “Elites” are under attack in an
anarchic way, when the “elite” justice minister can call on his supporters to
ignore all experts.
Something close to a chilling culture war is breaking out in Britain, a divide
deeper than I have ever known, as I listen to the anger aroused by this
referendum campaign. The air is corrosive, it has been rendered so. One can
register shock at what has happened, but not complete surprise.
The mood is ugly, and an MP is dead,
G, 16 June 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/
mood-ugly-mp-dead-jo-cox
Labour MP Jo Cox dies
after being shot and stabbed
Man, 52, arrested amid reports suspect shouted ‘Britain first’
Brendan Cox says his wife fought every day for a better world
Live blog: follow latest developments
Thursday 16 June 2016
18.04 BST
Last modified on Thursday 16 June 2016
22.52 BST
The Guardian
Robert Booth,
Vikram Dodd
and Nazia Parveen
The Labour MP Jo Cox has died after being shot and stabbed
multiple times following a constituency meeting. Armed officers responded to the
attack near a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire, on Thursday afternoon. A
52-year-old man was arrested in the area, police confirmed. The suspect was
named locally as Tommy Mair.
Police added that Cox, 41, the MP for Batley and Spen, had suffered serious
injuries and was pronounced dead at 1.48pm on Thursday by a doctor with
paramedics at the scene.
The suspect was named locally as Tommy Mair.
Police confirmed that a man in his late 40s to early 50s nearby suffered slight
injuries in the incident. They are also investigating reports that the suspect
shouted “Britain first”, a possible reference to the far-right political party
of that name, as he launched the attack. Police are understood to be talking to
at least one witness who claimed to have heard the attacker shout the words, and
the motivation for the incident will form part of their inquiry.
Cox’s husband, Brendan, said after her death was announced: “Today is the
beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less
joyful, less full of love. I and Jo’s friends and family are going to work every
moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate
that killed Jo.
“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with
an energy and a zest for life that would exhaust most people. She would have
wanted two things above all else to happen now – one, that our precious children
are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that
killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.
“Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the
full.”
The temporary chief constable of West Yorkshire police, Dee Collins, said there
was a large, ongoing investigation, with heightened visibility patrols in the
area. She added that weapons had been retrieved from the scene, including a
firearm.
At the press conference announcing Cox’s death, Collins said: “Jo was attacked
by a man who inflicted serious and sadly, ultimately fatal injuries.
Subsequently there was a further attack on a 77-year-old man nearby who has
sustained injuries that are non-life threatening.
“Shortly afterwards, a man was arrested nearby by uniform police officers.
Weapons including a firearm have also been recovered.
“At 1.48pm, Jo Cox was pronounced deceased by a doctor working with a paramedic
crew that was attending to her serious injuries.
“This is a very significant investigation with a large number of witnesses that
are being spoken to by the police at this time. There is a large and significant
crime scene and there is a large police presence in the area. A full
investigation is under way to establish the motive for this murder.”
There was police activity following the attack at a semi-detached house on the
Fieldhead estate in Birstall. Thomas Mair, 52, is the registered occupier of the
address, according to the electoral roll. Police have not officially confirmed
the suspect’s identity.
A cordon surrounded the house as a helicopter circled overheard and forensic
officers in boiler suits appeared to be searching the neat front garden, as well
as around garages at the back of the property.
‘Britain first’
Graeme Howard, 38, who lives in nearby Bond Street, told the Guardian he heard
the man shout “Britain first” before the shooting and during the arrest.
“I heard the shot and I ran outside and saw some ladies from the cafe running
out with towels,” he said. “There was loads of screaming and shouting and the
police officers showed up.
“He was shouting ‘Britain first’ when he was doing it and being arrested. He was
pinned down by two police officers and she was taken away in an ambulance.”
Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First, said the party was “looking into
the reports right now”. “We were extremely shocked to see these reports and we
are keen to confirm them, because of course at the moment it is hearsay,” she
said. “This has just been brought to our attention. This is absolutely not the
kind of behaviour we would condone.”
Other witnesses said the attack was launched after the MP became involved in an
altercation involving two men near where she held her weekly surgery. A Labour
source confirmed Cox was shot and stabbed after she had concluded the drop-in
session for constituents at about 1pm.
Residents arrive to place flowers close to the scene in Birstall where Labour MP
Jo Cox was shot.
The shopkeeper in a greengrocer opposite Birstall library, Golden D’Licious,
told the Guardian that he believed the attacker had been waiting for the MP
outside the library.
“I was inside the shop and all I heard was a scream and then the gunshot,” he
said, without giving his name. “I went out and everyone was dispersing. I
couldn’t see because it happened behind a car.”
Terry Flynn-Edwards, who runs the Divine hair studio opposite the scene of the
attack, said a man from the dry cleaners had tried to stop the assault. She
said: “She walked out of the library with her PA and he was waiting for her. He
stabbed her first and this guy tried to stop him and then he shot her.”
But one witness, Hithem Ben Abdallah, 56, who was in the cafe next door to the
library shortly after 1pm, said the MP was involved in an altercation between
two arguing men.
He told the Press Association a man in a baseball cap “suddenly pulled a gun
from his bag” and after a brief scuffle with another man the MP became involved.
He added: “He was fighting with her and wrestling with her and then the gun went
off twice and then she fell between two cars and I came and saw her bleeding on
the floor.”
Clarke Rothwell, another witness, told BBC News there was a direct altercation
between Cox and a man carrying a gun, who “purposefully” targeted her.
“He shot this lady and then shot her again,” he said. “He leant down. Someone
was wrestling with him and he was wielding a knife and lunging at her. Three
times she was shot. People were trying to help her.
“Then he ran off down a one-way street. Me and my mate drove round to try and
find him.”
A West Yorkshire police spokesman said: “At 12.53 today, police were called to a
report of an incident on Market Street, Birstall, where a woman in her 40s had
suffered serious injuries.”
The Priestley residential care home next door to the library on Market Street
was thought to be in lockdown. The firm’s head office said all the residents
were safe and accounted for following the shooting.
Neighbours on the Fieldhead council estate said the suspect had lived here 40
years with a female relative, who died a number of years ago, leaving him alone.
Kathleen Cooke, 62, said she and her daughter, Emma John, 30, had seen Mair half
an hour before the attack.
“I looked out of the window at about 12.30pm and he walked past carrying his
bag, wearing a cap. He looked perfectly calm and normal,” said John. “He was a
quiet person, kept himself to himself. We knew him around here from when he used
to do our gardens,” said Cooke.
One woman, who gave her name just as Karen, said Mair had tended her mother’s
garden regularly until a few years ago. He did not seem to have a job, she said.
Local teenagers said he was a quiet man unless they congregated on the wall
behind his house, which he did not like. “He’d shout at us,” said a 17-year-old.
“All this we are hearing now is totally at odds with the man we thought we
knew,” said one neighbour. “We knew him as someone who helped out, who did
volunteering.”
Senior politicians expressed their shock at the killing and sent their
condolences.
David Cameron said: “The death of Jo Cox is a tragedy. She was a committed and
caring MP. My thoughts are with her husband Brendan and her two young children.”
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the country would be “in shock at the
horrific murder” of the MP, who was a “much-loved colleague”.
Cox was elected to parliament in 2015, having previously worked internationally
as a head of policy and humanitarian campaigning for Oxfam.
She chaired the all-party parliamentary group for Friends of Syria, and was
vocal in making the case for military action in the country last autumn, on
humanitarian grounds. Her husband is a former Labour adviser who stepped down as
a senior executive of the charity Save the Children last year.
Cox’s fellow Labour MP John Mann described her as “one of the real stars of the
new intake”, and said her colleagues were “absolutely stunned” by the attack.
Labour MP Jo Cox dies after being shot and stabbed,
G, 16 June 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/16/
labour-mp-jo-cox-shot-in-west-yorkshire
Sadiq Khan's London mayoral win
gives Corbyn reason to be cheerful
Election of first Muslim mayor
of major western capital
promises to
offset big losses in Scotland
as SNP
maintains grip on Holyrood
Friday 6 May
2016
23.32 BST
Last modified
on Saturday 7 May 2016
07.38 BST
The Guardian
Anushka
Asthana,
Heather
Stewart
and Rowena
Mason
Sadiq Khan’s
election as London mayor in the early hours of Saturday handed a boost to Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn at the end of a difficult day in which Labour held ground
in England but endured a disastrous defeat in its former heartland of Scotland.
Khan’s landslide victory over his rival, Conservative Zac Goldsmith, in which he
secured more than 1.3m votes made him the first Muslim mayor of a major western
capital, and gave Labour the keys to City Hall after eight years of Conservative
control, following a bitterly fought and controversial campaign.
As the votes were being counted, senior Tories and even Goldsmith’s own sister
criticised his team’s strategy, which included repeated claims from the
candidate himself and David Cameron that Khan had shown bad judgment by sharing
platforms with alleged extremists.
The former Conservative party chairman Sayeeda Warsi attacked the Goldsmith
campaign on Twitter, claiming: “Our appalling dog whistle campaign for
#LondonMayor2016 lost us the election, our reputation & credibility on issues of
race and religion.”
Steve Hilton, Cameron’s former director of strategy who was part of an effort to
“detoxify” the Tories, told BBC Newsnight that Goldsmith had brought back the
“nasty party label to the Conservative party”.
Speaking after finally being declared winner after midnight, Khan said that he
grew up on a council estate and “never dreamt that someone like me could be
elected as mayor of London”.
He highlighted his positive campaign before making a pointed attack on
Goldsmith. “I am so glad that London has chosen hope over fear and unity over
division. The politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city.”
Goldsmith thanked his team and admitted he was disappointed but failed to
address the accusations.
The row could be uncomfortable for the prime minister, who used the line of
attack more than once in the House of Commons.
Jemima Goldsmith questioned the tactics, saying they did not reflect the
“eco-friendly, independent-minded politician with integrity” she knew her
brother to be.
But underlining the hostility the new mayor could face once he takes up office,
the candidate for Britain First, Paul Golding, turned his back in protest as
Khan made his acceptance speech at City Hall. “Britain has an extremist mayor!”
shouted a member of Golding’s team.
Corbyn congratulated Khan at the end of a day of results across the UK that were
not bad enough to trigger a coup against the Labour leader. He said he had
defied the critics to hang on across England, where the party retained councils
such as Crawley and Plymouth and had suffered a lower net loss than expected, of
two dozen councillors.
“All across England last night we were getting predictions that Labour was going
to lose councils. We didn’t, we hung on and we grew support in a lot of places,”
Corbyn said in a defiant speech to activists in Sheffield.
In Scotland, however, Labour was pushed into third place by the Conservatives in
a crushing defeat for a party that once dominated the political landscape north
of the border. Corbyn said: “We are going to walk hand-in-hand with our party in
Scotland to build that support once again.”
The leader’s positive take on the election results contrasted with a more
cautious response from a series of shadow cabinet members who said that Labour
had a long way to go before it was on track for a 2020 majority.
The shadow leader of the House, Chris Bryant, said Labour was not “match ready”,
while the shadow Scottish secretary, Ian Murray, claimed that people did not see
Corbyn’s Labour as a “credible party of future government”.
Other seized on the predictions of psephologists who said it was extremely
unusual for a party in opposition to lose council seats at this stage of the
electoral cycle.
Jo Cox and Neil Coyle, two new MPs who nominated Corbyn, wrote in the Guardian
that they regretted their decision, warning that “weak leadership” risked
keeping their party out of power until 2030.
Cameron hailed the Scottish result, saying he would not have believed it
possible two years ago. He accused Labour of losing touch with working people by
being “obsessed with their leftwing causes and unworkable economic policies”.
Dubbed “Super Thursday”, the day of elections across the UK saw:
• Labour achieving 31% of the vote share, just ahead of the Conservatives on
30%, according to a BBC forecast, based on how people had voted in England.
• The SNP losing its overall majority in the Scottish parliament but easily
remaining the largest party with 63 seats, ahead of the Conservatives with 31
seats and Labour with 24.
• Labour remaining the dominant party in Wales, winning 29 out of 60 seats, but
losing its minister Leighton Andrews to the Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood.
Ukip also won seven seats in Wales.
The polling analyst John Curtice suggested the results would translate into 301
Tory MPs in a general election, short of a majority, with Labour on 253.
The Liberal Democrats made progress, taking control of Watford council and
gaining seats elsewhere in the country.
But the main focus of the day was on Labour’s performance, after a week in which
Corbyn had been plunged into controversy over antisemitism claims that resulted
in a series of suspensions, including Ken Livingstone.
The Labour leader’s allies hailed the outcome, with the shadow chancellor, John
McDonnell, and the shadow communities secretary, Jon Trickett, calling on
critics of the leadership to “put up or shut up”.
Sadiq Khan's
London mayoral win
gives Corbyn reason to be cheerful,
G, 6 May 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/06/
sadiq-khan-london-mayor-corbyn-labour-scotland-snp
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