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| * Paul Waugh |
by Paul Waugh | Opinion
Brendan Cox’s statement included a heartfelt vow “to fight against the hate that killed Jo.” It’s just too early to know for sure what motivated her killing, or what shaped the hatred her husband talked of.
The Daily Star last night headlined its splash “MP Dead After Attack By Brexit Gunman”, but it was the only paper to make any direct link between Jo’s death and her pro-EU views.
Other seemed to jump to swift conclusions. Hillary Clinton tweeted: ”It is cruel and terrible that her life was cut short by a violent act of political intolerance”. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU Commissioner for Migration, tweeted Jo had been “murdered for her dedication to European democracy and humanity. Extremism divides and nourishes hatred”,
Twitter was alight with a controversy over some papers’ decision to describe the arrested man as a “crazed loner”. Was similar care taken with the killers of Lee Rigby, or the Leytonstone knife attacker, some wanted to know. Were there classic double standards?
And changes to Alex Massie’s article in the Spectator sparked another set of angry exchanges.
With the announcement of Jo’s death barely hours old, I couldn’t help feeling that we were yet again in the kind of frenzied debate that she so deplored. Is it too much to hope that everyone can just dial down the rhetoric, not just in the days leading to next Thursday’s EU referendum, but for some time thereafter?
As for the rival In and Out campaigns, everyone is wary of trying to politicise Jo’s death in any way. If the killer did indeed have a political motive, we should know. But it’s unlikely we can be sure so soon, unless there is very clear evidence.
There is a wider point here. For too long, MPs have been treated by many not as public servants but as self-servants. While the expenses affair was deservedly exposed, “MPs’ snouts in the trough” has become a corrosive catch-all. And the hysteria of much of our political discourse has been as bad in print as it has online.
Cynics will say I and my fellow political reporters defend politicians because we've become too close to them. Being close to them doesn't mean you give them an easy ride, far from it. But after nearly 20 years working in the Commons, I can tell you this place has plenty of people dedicated to public service in a way that gets little recognised. Maybe the #thankyourMP hastag will provide a brief respite, but I'm not optimistic.
For years, the left derided Tory MPs as uncaring at best, evil at worst. And the right derided Labour MPs as spendthrift or unpatriotic. Too many in the media - and the ‘non mainstream media’ - prefer cynicism to legitimate scepticism. Maybe all sides can see that actually questioning your opponent’s motives is an impoverished, miserable form of politics and that there’s much common ground. The common ground that Jo Cox so desperately wanted to see, to effect real change.
Brendan Cox’s statement included a heartfelt vow “to fight against the hate that killed Jo.” It’s just too early to know for sure what motivated her killing, or what shaped the hatred her husband talked of.
The Daily Star last night headlined its splash “MP Dead After Attack By Brexit Gunman”, but it was the only paper to make any direct link between Jo’s death and her pro-EU views.
Other seemed to jump to swift conclusions. Hillary Clinton tweeted: ”It is cruel and terrible that her life was cut short by a violent act of political intolerance”. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU Commissioner for Migration, tweeted Jo had been “murdered for her dedication to European democracy and humanity. Extremism divides and nourishes hatred”,
Twitter was alight with a controversy over some papers’ decision to describe the arrested man as a “crazed loner”. Was similar care taken with the killers of Lee Rigby, or the Leytonstone knife attacker, some wanted to know. Were there classic double standards?
And changes to Alex Massie’s article in the Spectator sparked another set of angry exchanges.
With the announcement of Jo’s death barely hours old, I couldn’t help feeling that we were yet again in the kind of frenzied debate that she so deplored. Is it too much to hope that everyone can just dial down the rhetoric, not just in the days leading to next Thursday’s EU referendum, but for some time thereafter?
As for the rival In and Out campaigns, everyone is wary of trying to politicise Jo’s death in any way. If the killer did indeed have a political motive, we should know. But it’s unlikely we can be sure so soon, unless there is very clear evidence.
There is a wider point here. For too long, MPs have been treated by many not as public servants but as self-servants. While the expenses affair was deservedly exposed, “MPs’ snouts in the trough” has become a corrosive catch-all. And the hysteria of much of our political discourse has been as bad in print as it has online.
Cynics will say I and my fellow political reporters defend politicians because we've become too close to them. Being close to them doesn't mean you give them an easy ride, far from it. But after nearly 20 years working in the Commons, I can tell you this place has plenty of people dedicated to public service in a way that gets little recognised. Maybe the #thankyourMP hastag will provide a brief respite, but I'm not optimistic.
For years, the left derided Tory MPs as uncaring at best, evil at worst. And the right derided Labour MPs as spendthrift or unpatriotic. Too many in the media - and the ‘non mainstream media’ - prefer cynicism to legitimate scepticism. Maybe all sides can see that actually questioning your opponent’s motives is an impoverished, miserable form of politics and that there’s much common ground. The common ground that Jo Cox so desperately wanted to see, to effect real change.
* Paul Waugh Is The Executive Editor of HuffPost, UK.
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