Politicians felt ‘hunted’ during campaign, says Jo Cox’s widower
Politicians felt “hunted” during the election campaign, the widower of Jo Cox, the murdered MP, has said.
Brendan Cox warned that the intimidation MPs faced was “on another level”, and said such behaviour towards politicians “is being seen as more legitimate by a wider range of causes”.
Mrs Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered in 2016 by a far-Right terrorist, and Mr Cox has since been a vocal campaigner against political violence.
He told BBC Radio 4: “I think, having spoken to lots of MPs about it, there was a sense that something had changed, that they felt hunted, that they felt unable to go about campaigning.”
Jess Phillips, the re-elected Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, described the 2024 campaign as the worst election in which she has stood.
She held her seat by just 700 votes, after standing against Jody McIntyre, a Workers’ Party of Britain candidate who ran on a pro-Palestine ticket.
Car tyres slashed
During her victory speech on July 4, Ms Phillips spoke of a community activist who had joined her on the campaign trail who “was filmed on the street and had her tyres slashed”.
She added that she felt unable to allow the children of Mrs Cox to join her canvassing, as she said “there is absolutely no way I could have allowed … them to see what was aggressive and violence in our democracy”.
Mr Cox said on Tuesday: “Lots of us saw this, and it ranged from, as Jess was talking about in constituencies like hers, to things being thrown at Nigel Farage, to people like Rosie Duffield being unable to go to hustings. There was a wide range of intimidation, but I do think it was another level.”
He added: “I think there is something more caustic in our democratic culture, which means that intimidation of MPs, and in some cases even attacks on MPs and councillors, is being seen as more legitimate by a wider range of causes and it’s that that we need to tackle.”
He also spoke of “men in balaclavas” and “fireworks being thrown” during the campaign.
Taskforce
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has vowed to crack down on intimidation of MPs and candidates, and will chair a meeting of the Defending Democracy Taskforce next week.
Ms Cooper warned that candidates in the UK faced an “alarming rise” in abuse and said that “the disgraceful scenes we saw in some areas during this election campaign must not be repeated”.
Her remarks came after Lord Walney, the Government’s political violence tsar, last weekend handed over a dossier detailing incidents of intimidation, as he warned of a “dark underbelly of extremism” in public life.
Mr Farage, the leader of Reform UK, was struck by a milkshake while campaigning in his seat of Clacton, in Essex.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat to a pro-Gaza independent, said he was forced to hide in a vicarage from protesters and was the subject of anonymous leaflets calling him “Genocide Jon”.
‘Slow degradation of democracy’
Mr Cox warned that if such intimidation and abuse of candidates were to continue, it could lead to a “slow degradation and undermining of our democracy”.
“Democracy doesn’t always die in a flash. It’s not always a coup d’etat that ends our democracy. It can die from a thousand cuts.
“And if we end up in a situation where people don’t feel that they can go campaigning, they don’t feel that they can be honest about their views, they don’t feel that they can go to hustings – then [there is a] risk both of good candidates not standing, of people being put off in the first place [and of] being unable to have that democratic discourse that keeps our country running.
“Then there’s a real risk that there’s a slow degradation and undermining of our democracy.”