Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Can’t we show some decency about Jo Cox’s death?

Despite the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns rightly halting as soon as the news of the savage murder of Jo Cox MP came through, some people could not pass up the opportunity to press what they saw as a political advantage.  The campaign for Britain to leave the EU may have been silent, but EU officials were not.  A day after the murder the German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a call for all sides in the referendum to respect the opinions of others:

‘Otherwise, the radicalisation will become unstoppable.  Exaggerations, and radicalisation of part of the language, do not help foster an atmosphere of respect.’

Was she thinking of European Council President Donald Tusk’s warning, only a few days earlier, that voting ‘Leave’ could be ‘the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilisation in its entirety.’  I suspect not.  Yet what might one not do if you believed your opponents were poised to destroy civilisation as a whole?

At least Chancellor Merkel left it a few hours.  Within minutes of the announcement of Jo Cox’s death the EU Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos Tweeted out:

‘Jo Cox murdered for her dedication to European democracy and humanity. Extremism divides and nourishes hatred.’

In the US it was not an obscure figure, but the person most likely to be the next US President – Hilary Clinton – who sent out a message saying that Jo Cox’s life had been cut short by ‘a violent act of political intolerance.’  I wonder who she was hoping everyone would think of?

All this before we knew anything very much about his motives or mental state.  Since then a clearer picture has emerged.  It shows a man with a history of mental illness, a loner, who family and others said never had any involvement or interest in politics. 

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