Legacy of Jo Cox

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kim Leadbeater]

I thank my hon. Friend for his most marvellous intervention, and for wearing a beautiful coloured tie, which perfectly co-ordinates with the Jo Cox Foundation logo. He is absolutely right, and he is such a valuable addition to this place. I thank him for his friendship.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) (Lab)]

She would have loved you, Zubir.

[Kim Leadbeater]

She would have loved you.

It is so important that we keep empathy and compassion at the heart of our politics, and Jo understood that better than most. She believed deeply in human dignity. She believed that people from different backgrounds could live together peacefully. She believed that Britain is strongest when it is open-hearted rather than fearful. That belief cost her her life, but it must not die with her.

If there is one lesson we should take from Jo’s legacy, it is this: hatred grows when good people become indifferent to division. The answer to polarisation cannot be more polarisation. The answer to fear cannot be more fear. The answer must be courage—the courage to listen, the courage to speak responsibly, the courage to reject extremism in all its forms, the courage to defend democratic values even when emotions run high and, most importantly, the courage to remember that we belong to one another.

In remembering Jo today, let us not simply mourn what was lost; let us ask ourselves what kind of country we want to become. Do we want a society defined by outrage and suspicion, or one defined by compassion and solidarity? Do we want future generations to inherit division, or do we want them to inherit hope? That choice is ours. Perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer Jo is not merely to repeat her words, but to live by them and to show in all our actions and behaviours that we really are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) (Lab)]

I do not have any notes written down, because when I tried to write things down this morning, I just kept crying, but I shall try to get through this regardless.

Many brilliant things will be said about Jo today, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) has given us much insight. I want to start my remarks where she ended hers, in that we have to live the values of Jo’s words, not just say them. When I was reflecting this morning about my friendship with Jo, I thought about how Jo was a doer. She was always coming up with a scheme of some kind or another—some of them ridiculous, I have to say. I text the Minister on the Front Bench this morning, saying, “We do have to remember that sometimes she was quite mental!”

I reflected on the fact that she made me into one of her projects. When I arrived here, I did not know many people—I was not the popular girl I am now—and I did not live in London. My family were at home in Birmingham, and I had been to Parliament one time before working in this building. She made it so that I always had somewhere to go. She sought me out, she made friends with me, and she took me to have dinner with her family, because I could not go home to mine. She invited me to events—she tried to make connections for other people. There has been a lot of talk recently about the boys’ club in politics—we have seen a little bit behind some curtains—but Jo was definitely trying to make a girls’ club. She would make sure that you were introduced to the right people. If she heard you talking about things that you were interested in and she had a connection, she wanted you to have it.

But the greatest connection that Jo gave me was to invite me into her family. To this day, the place where I go when I am sad or things are difficult, or just when I fancy a drink and a celebration, is the moorings where Jo lived. When I resigned the other day and I was all a-tizz, I went to sit with Cuillin and Lejla, to eat a takeaway and do Cuillin’s GCSE homework with him— I kept shouting “oxbow lakes” at him repeatedly, which yesterday he told me was not all that helpful.

The legacy of Jo Cox in my life is that she gave me a family to be part of when I was away from my family. There is not a time when things have been hard and they have not been there for me. I recently lost my sister-in-law, and the people who were there for me—to make sure I could help raise my nephews without their mom—were Brendan, Cuillin and Lejla. They are the most important legacy that Jo has, and I am eternally grateful that when we first arrived in this place together, she tried to make sure that we had connections; that nobody would be lonely; that somewhere would always be available for you to have a cup of tea or a curry, or do geography homework. It is mundane—it is the small mundanity of kindness.

The way that Jo’s family have kept her alive in Cuillin and Lejla’s minds is so phenomenal. Yesterday, Lejla made a speech in No. 10. She said, “My mom was a brilliant mom, she was a brilliant Member of Parliament, and she was a brilliant friend.” I know, because she told me, that her mom felt like she was not good enough at any of those things, but the way Lejla remembers it—the way she has grown up remembering her mother—is far more accurate than the way her mother felt about herself.

I try to encourage young women to get involved in politics, so Lejla came out with me once to go door-knocking in an election. I remember her sat in the back of my car as we were driving to the meeting point— I think the election was for the West Midlands Mayor; I am sure Lejla was deeply involved in wanting to do that—and talking about a memory that must have been given to her. She said, “When my mom was standing for election, because we don’t have the right accent, we had to be taught how to say, ‘Vote for Jo!’” [Laughter.] There was just total delight in this little girl faking a Yorkshire accent while in the west midlands.

What Jo gave me in life was friendship and family that has endured to this day, and what she gave me in politics—which I think actually is still quite rare—was to show me that you have to be courageous, you have to be brave, and sometimes you have to stick your neck out quite a long way. I often think of that—certainly in relation to Gaza, for example—and constantly wish she was here. I still sometimes send her text messages, as if she is alive. I wish she was here to talk us through these things in this House. I think, “What would Jo do now? What would Jo say in this circumstance?” I can think of no better person who could be here right now, in the politics we face today, than Jo. The remarks that my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has made today—it is now really hard for me not just to say her name —are not just a nice speech to hear, but the embodiment of living like Jo and loving like Jo.

It does not matter which political persuasion or flavour you are, the idea that everybody in this Chamber is some sort of baddie over there is the easiest political line. If the line that you have to take to get likes, clicks and popularity is that there is some sort of shadowy institution in this place made up of people who will never understand the world, and that is why we are the better alternative, or if you are saying that the only reason things are bad in our country is because of x or y over there—when I was a kid, it was single moms; now it is immigrants—it is the politics of stupidity. Any fool can behave like that. There is no value in it whatsoever.

We did not allow that kind of politics to creep in at the time of Jo’s death, because we did not want her death to be politicised. We wanted her life and her legacy to be politicised; we did not want to stare down what it was actually about at the time, because we wanted to forge her legacy. That was the right thing to do, but every single day in this place and outside it, there are people doing the exact opposite: using people’s deaths to sell their political narrative. They should be ashamed of themselves.

If anything you say or do does not drive forward a good outcome for our country, do not do it. Do not say it. Jo would be a beacon in that regard, as her sister is, and I beg everybody to be much more like the actual people in our country, who—as my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley says—are good. If we all lived more like Jo and looked for somebody who needed connections that we might be able to give them, who maybe needed a cup of tea and a place to call home away from home, there would not be any of the division that there is today.

I did not meet Jo Cox on social media; I met her around a table with a cup of tea. I ask people to put down their phones—both in politics and in how we deal with our communities—to pick up a cup of tea, and to live and love like Jo did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Apsana Begum]

I agree that we must take steps both online and offline with the same level of energy and commitment, and I thank the hon. Member for his kind words.

When Members first come to Parliament or enter politics, they know that they are ultimately taking a risk with their life, and that is not something we should have to do when we put ourselves forward for office. It is not easy for me to say that I have also contended with that scenario—perhaps I have to understand that it just comes with the job. There have been times when I have legitimately feared for my life, and that was particularly true during the last general election campaign. As I have previously informed the House, during that election the abuse and intimidation that I had long endured reached new heights. It was an election in which my abusive ex-husband stood as a candidate against me, after I had already faced several years of post-separation harassment. Even before that I had already endured a vexatious trial, and a reselection process in the Labour party, during which I experienced harassment from his associates. Alarm bells were rung by organisations in the domestic abuse sector, and representations were made on my behalf, but the situation is ongoing and unresolved. All of that has been a deeply harrowing experience that I truly do not believe any survivor of domestic abuse should be expected to endure.

I also feel a strong sense of duty and responsibility to other survivors of domestic abuse in this country, and over the years they have reached out to me, saying that they feel a strength when they see people in this House speak about their own experiences. I do not want to be a case study or a statistic sometime in the future, or for us to say that nothing could really happen in this situation, yet sometime down the line, one or two decades later, we will all look back and say, “Oh yeah—she was really failed. The system did not protect her as a survivor of domestic abuse. We are better now, but there were failings along the way.”

For that reason, along with Members across the House, I am working to try to secure better protection for candidates facing domestic violence, post-separation harassment, and hostility in the context of election campaigns. That is why I have provided testimony and participated in the work of the all-party group on women in Parliament, and given evidence to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is developing a method for institutional action—MINA—to protect candidates standing in elections or those in elected office who suffer violence in politics.

Domestic abuse can affect people from all walks of life and in all forms of employment, including those of us serving in public office. All survivors should be able to have dreams and hopes, a life beyond domestic abuse, and play a role in national policy making and our democracy, just like anybody else who has not gone through those awful and horrific experiences. This is not just about me. As I have said, no survivor of domestic abuse should be prevented from standing or staying in office due to post-separation harassment.

[Jess Phillips]

It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with my hon. Friend over the years, and I absolutely agree with her. Does she agree that perpetrating domestic abuse or sexual violence should eliminate someone from being able to hold such office?

[Apsana Begum]

That is exactly the area that many of us are looking at in the Representation of the People Bill before the House, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. She has publicly said that my experiences were completely unacceptable and unjustified, and that we must all do better to ensure that no one who seeks to stand for public office or to represent their communities has to face what I have had to face. She and I both work with many organisations and activists across the tackling violence against women and girls sector. That entire movement was built on the backs of survivors who decided to do something for themselves and for others, and who became activists. Why should those people not be able to stand for office? Why should they not be policymakers? Surely that is almost a natural progression. Why should they look at situations such as mine and think to themselves, “No, I can’t do that; I can’t take it too far” because the perpetrator will target them?

It must be the duty of everyone in society, and of all political parties, to ensure that elected representatives who are survivors of domestic abuse are not exposed to further harassment in their roles. I wish to thank members of the Jo Cox Foundation, including Dr Hannah Phillips, who I have worked with, as well as Elect Her and other organisations, for their encouragement. I also thank many of my constituents who have stood and continue to stand with me throughout what I continue to endure. I am also grateful for the support of my independent domestic violence advocate, without whom I do not think I would have been able to go through many of the procedures and processes that I continue to endure, just to be heard and to ensure that the right protections are in place.

I was elected to this place three years after Jo’s tragic murder, but the impact that she had on those who had the privilege to know her is clear. I know how proud many of my constituents are to have called Jo a neighbour in Poplar and Limehouse, and once again I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley and say how I touched I have been by her words. I hope we can try to change politics for the better, build a society with dignity at its heart, and improve safety for women and survivors of domestic abuse.