How the murder of my sister, Jo Cox, changed Britain

0:00Fiona Harari:This is The Guardian.

0:08Fiona Harari:Today, 10 years on, Kim Leadbetter on the murder of her sister, the MP Jo Cox.

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1:20Kim Leadbetter:On the 16th of June, we were at home and we were about to watch football. But I'd taken my car in for an MOT and I was trying to be all healthy and I ran down to collect my car from the garage. And just as I arrived at the garage, my phone rang and I got the call saying that Joe had been attacked.

1:39Fiona Harari:Reports of a stabbing, reports of a shooting in Burstall near Leeds. and we do know that the Labour MP Jo Cox has been injured. She has been airlifted to hospital in Leeds.

1:56Kim Leadbetter:And to be quite honest, I don't remember a great deal after that moment. I remember I started shaking and I just couldn't stop shaking. And instinctively, I knew this was not good. And I don't know if that's a sister thing. I don't know if it's just an instinct thing. I don't know what it was, but I just knew straight away. I remember saying to my partner, who was saying, as people do, it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK, and I just remember saying, I just don't think it's going to be OK. And I sort of knew.

2:25Fiona Harari:Just before one o 'clock today, Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spenborough, was attacked in Market Street, Burstall. I am now very sad to have to report that she has died as a result of her injuries. Before going into further detail, I would like to express our deepest sympathies to her family and friends at this tragic time.

2:53Kim Leadbetter:To be honest, I probably don't remember a huge amount about the next six to twelve months because it's all a bit of a blur and I think your body and your mind just go into autopilot, they go into self-protection, self-preservation. We obviously had to deal with the first few days, weeks and months and look everybody loses people we all have our own experiences of death and loss and bereavement but what happened to Jo was just unbelievably horrific and so incredibly public that literally within hours the world's media descended on on Birstall and us as a family.

3:31Fiona Harari:Jo Cox was a Labour MP for Batley and Spen the place she'd grown up and known her whole life. She was firmly pro-Europe, a passionate campaigner for social justice and the mother of two young children who were five and three years old. On the 16th of June 2016, at the height of a toxic Brexit campaign, Joe was murdered by a far-right extremist. He shot and stabbed her several times outside Burstall Library in West Yorkshire, shouting, this is for Britain. She was 41 years old.

4:05Kim Leadbetter:and all I remember thinking was I've just got to look after my mum and dad and do whatever I can for Jo's kids during that time and for our community because you know people talk about us as a family but our whole community was literally shaken by what happened to Jo and so many people were impacted by that day not just us the shopkeepers the witnesses the people who were there the people who'd worked with Jo while she was an MP people who you know we hadn't heard from for years, saw it on the news. So we ended up doing this massive press conference in Bristol. And this was me, like I'd never done anything like that before in my life.

4:39Fiona Harari:They came, they said, because they wanted to focus on that which unites us and not which divides us. Jo Cox's father, her mother and sister.

4:52Kim Leadbetter:There are some things in life you should never have to do. Last night I had to go and identify my sister's body. Yes, this was Jo Cox MP and she was many things to many people in her too short life. But she was my sister, my only sibling, my parents' firstborn child, a wife and a mum.

5:23Fiona Harari:I think it says something about your family and your sort of need and sort of drive to do that. But one of the things that really stood out is that she sort of begged her staff to leave and to escape and said, you know, I think the quote was, get away, get away, you two, let him hurt me, don't let him hurt you. Those were her last words.

5:42Kim Leadbetter:That is who Jo was. Jo was an incredibly selfless, lovely, kind, compassionate person. She was full of nothing but goodness. And she'd spent years working in humanitarian organisations around the world in some of the world's worst war zones and, you know, really dangerous places, often which she didn't tell us about as a family and I think one of the things certainly my dad really struggled with was having done all that how could she be killed in Burstall literally five minutes from where we live you know that just felt so cruel on so many levels um and you know and it is just so wrong isn't it but then really bad things sometimes happen to really good people

6:24Fiona Harari:from the guardian i'm noshin ikbal today in focus remembering the mp joe cox

6:37Fiona Harari:kim ledmita you are labour mp for spend valley in yorkshire which you've represented since 2021 is a constituency that your sister held technically when it was batting and spend can we go back a bit and find out more about who Jo was and specifically you know what she was like as a child and what kind of big sister she was to you?

7:00Kim Leadbetter:Jo and I were really close growing up probably too close in some ways so when eventually she went to university we both really desperately missed each other and I think that was when Jo first experienced loneliness and an issue that she came to work on a lot later in life but we were really close and I've got nothing but an abundance of happy memories when we were kids. And we didn't have anything fancy. We weren't from a posh, privileged family or anything. We certainly weren't from any sort of political dynasty. You know, we just went, we played out on our BMX bikes, we climbed trees, we pretended we were in the A-team, we made up dance routines to 80s pop music.

7:34Kim Leadbetter:You know, we just had a really lovely childhood. And then going through school, Jo was really popular. She was academic, she was sporty, but she was always thinking about what she could do to make a difference. Jo, as you said, was really academic. She went to Cambridge, but when she went to Cambridge, she did find it really difficult. It's a different world and it does remind me of parliament in lots of ways. If that is not your background, if you're from a fairly basic working class background in the north of England, that is not your world. And she really struggled. But what I love about Jo is that she stuck it out and she didn't give in.

8:12Kim Leadbetter:And eventually she found her people. She found other students there who'd come from similar backgrounds. And she found students who weren't from similar backgrounds, but actually they bonded and connected and became really good friends. Why do you think she went into politics? I think she went on her own journey through her education through Cambridge, but then also working for charities and humanitarian causes. And I think she had always been very interested in politics. And we did joke about her coming back and being our MP one day, probably from a relatively young age. But she didn't do that straight away.

8:44Kim Leadbetter:I think what she saw through the humanitarian work that she did was that, you know, you can make a difference in lots of ways. But politics is where the big levers are. And if you want to make a difference on issues that affect the country, and indeed the world, that is where you need to be. She also really wanted to come back to Yorkshire and reconnect with her roots. And she would not have been an MP for anywhere else. She was very clear about that. She wanted to come back and represent Batley and Spen. And when the seat became available and the previous MP retired, the timing was pretty bad, actually, because her children were so tiny.

9:17Kim Leadbetter:And she really did wrestle with whether she could do it because her absolute priority was being a mum. But, you know, she did go for it. And then, you know, she did that job with such determination, but such compassion.

9:31Fiona Harari:Batley and Spen is a gathering of typically

9:33Kim Leadbetter:independent, no-nonsense, proud Yorkshire towns and villages. Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it Irish Catholics across the constituency or Muslims from Indian Gujarat or Pakistan principally from Kashmir. And whilst we celebrate our diversity, the thing that 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 than that which divides us. I think, you know, you couldn't have got a better person to go into politics. But there is a reality, which is you never switch off, you never leave work. And I think that is one of the things that she struggled with the most.

10:13Kim Leadbetter:But what she also loved was, like I say, coming back to Yorkshire and reconnecting with us. And we were just starting to build up that closeness again. And her diary manager, Fazila, would say, right, I'm blocking an hour out. You're going to go see your sister. You're going to go have a cup of tea with your mum and dad. And we were just sort of starting to get into into that routine.

10:32Fiona Harari:Do you remember the last time you spoke to her and what you guys talked about?

10:36Kim Leadbetter:Yeah so I saw her I think it was the week before and she came around to our house and she turned up and she was knackered and stressed and rushing around and crazy and she came into the house and she never had any clothes she used to forget things she was just dashing around like crazy so she put one of my hoodies on and she was tiny was Jo and she just snuggled up in our armchair and we just chatted and talked and when she left to go back to the place that she had she said oh let me give you your hoodie back and I said no no it's fine just give me it next time you see me and then I didn't see her again after that

11:18Fiona Harari:Kim it's difficult to recall that sort of exact chronology of that period of the Brexit campaign and it has been 10 years, but what do you remember about what things were like when it all kicked off and how involved Joe was in that Remain campaign?

11:34Kim Leadbetter:There was a really sort of febrile atmosphere at the time. Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you! Bye bye you! Bye bye you! MPs! Traitors! MPs! Traitors! And I wasn't involved directly in any of the campaigning around Brexit. I had a few very honest conversations with Jo about it because Jo was a very strong Remainer and she said look you know whatever else you think this is not going to be good for our country economically and I think that's probably how things have played out exactly and she was heavily involved in the campaign I mean I was sorting through some things recently and I found some of the things that she had with her on the day she was killed and her better in t-shirt was in there crumpled up in her bag, which I hadn't sort of been near for 10 years.

12:24Kim Leadbetter:She'd been out campaigning that morning in the constituency to remain. But the atmosphere around it was just, it just wasn't a good feeling. I remember seeing the signs outside parliament when MPs were trying to walk in and they were being mobbed in the street. And I thought, this does not feel safe and it does not feel like a good place to be as a country. And then what happened was we were sort of pushed into camps very quickly. We were sort of here or there.

12:52Fiona Harari:And within families as well. Families, friendships.

12:55Kim Leadbetter:And I think a lot of those divisions have not been healed. That is just so sad. And I think that has continued and been replicated on a range of issues. And this is one thing that I get really sort of frustrated about. Most things are not black and white. Most things are not either here or there. And most people are not here or there. Most people or somewhere in the middle, you know, weighing things up. But sadly, the media often, social media particularly, pushes us to the extremes and it pushes us to take a position. And that is really dangerous. But it's easier and it's easier for, you know, for some politicians to say to people, it's simple, just pick a side.

13:32Kim Leadbetter:And actually, I can't think of many issues in life where it is simple.

13:40Fiona Harari:Kim, Jo's murder was obviously shocking and after her death there was this cross-party call for a calm and kinder politics. However, the very next day after she'd been killed, the Leave campaign launched this widely condemned poster. I don't know if you remember the one that showed this line of brown men with the words breaking point and a photo of Nigel Farage imposed at the front demanding we take back control of our borders. How did you process what was happening in the week leading up to that Brexit vote?

14:13Kim Leadbetter:I mean, again, after Joe's murder, I probably wasn't processing very much at all. So I have a recollection of that kind of climate and that environment. And I do remember that particular poster. But again, that feeds into what we were just saying. That isn't what Brexit was ever about. And people were made to think it was, rightly or wrongly. and they were making decisions on information that I don't believe was accurate. It just wasn't. And, you know, the£350 million on the side of the bus for the NHS was another example of that and that's never happened, you know. So I don't mind whatever opinions people hold, that's absolute their prerogative.

14:50Kim Leadbetter:But let's have informed opinions based on facts.

14:54Fiona Harari:I mean, facts sort of went out of the window at that time. Experts were completely derided. And that's just got worse.

15:00Kim Leadbetter:I mean, that has got worse. I've read so many things that are just not true, just not accurate. But once it's out there, it's out there. And the question is what we can do about that. And that, I suppose, is my focus looking forward to the next sort of 10 years, how we can pull back from that misinformation, disinformation, polarization, and what responsibility we've all got to play in that.

15:20Fiona Harari:Were you shocked by the result?

15:21Kim Leadbetter:How did you feel when it came in? I mean, again, I didn't really know what day it was at that time. I probably wasn't shocked because, you know, I was in an area where there was a lot of people who were clearly going to vote to leave. And maybe there was some complacency within the Remain campaign that, oh, it'll all be all right in the end. I mean, looking back, there was quite a bit of complacency, wasn't there? Yeah. And that is something I've really taken with me into politics. You've got to listen to people and you can't just label people, you know, because they are basing their views on their lived experience.

15:54Kim Leadbetter:They're basing their views on things they've been told, whether that's true or not true. But what you can't do is dismiss people. And we, I think, as a society, have got to be more open to listening to people who might have different opinions to us. And it feeds into the words that Jo said in Parliament about having more in common. Yes, I do believe we have more in common than that which divides us. But actually, where we do disagree, let's explore that. And if your life isn't going very well, let's look at why that is. let's not just try and find someone to blame for that because what we do is we blame people who don't look like us we blame people who've got a different life story and that is dangerous and that does push people towards the extremes but sometimes that means having difficult conversations nuanced conversations listening empathizing all those things that you know we're too busy to do and I think that's what we've got to try and recapture