Don’t use the killing of Jo Cox as a political tool in the EU referendum debate
Remain trolls should apologise for suggesting Brexit helped inspire suspected killer Tommy Mair
JO Cox’s killing has stunned the nation.
A new MP, passionate about her job, her family and her children, is gunned down at a surgery where she is trying to help people.
Her loss is something all of us must feel and our politics is irrelevant.
Far too many on the Remain side of the Referendum have, however, used Cox’s tragic death for political point scoring.
Her attacker, Thomas Mair, may or may not have shouted “Put Britain first”.
One alleged eyewitness denied ever hearing him shout it.
Another, cited as definitively saying so, was far less clear in her local paper, saying he shouted “what sounded like” that phrase.
It is reported that a Thomas Mair, ten years ago, subscribed to a racist magazine.
But, more clearly, Mair had distinct, long-established mental health problems.
He had treatment for it and was on medication.
He attended Pathways Day Centre for adults with mental illness.
He did volunteer gardening for the elderly.
He had a mixed-race brother of whom he was fond, according to his family, who said he never expressed political or racist views.
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Of his volunteer work, he told his local paper that it “beats all the psychotherapy and medication in the world”.
The fact is Jo Cox’s killer may have been “a racist” online or subscribed to such magazines.
But if other reports are also true then this is not relevant.
He was severely mentally ill and had been treated over a long period of time, longer than five years, given that his quote is from 2011 and refers to ongoing treatment.
It is beyond disgusting to use this man’s mental collapse and psychological unsoundness as a weapon in a political campaign.
The BBC News Twitter feed on Wednesday night had not one tweet about his mental illness, but plenty on if he shouted “Put Britain first” or not.
The same bastions of the regressive Left who rightly demanded the Orlando massacre not be blamed on Muslims have not hesitated to try to pin this killing on Brexit campaigners fighting a strong, just and non-racist campaign.
His psychopathy had precisely nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit. Will the Remain trolls apologise?
I can only pray they do not succeed in their frankly wicked attempt to use public grief over Jo Cox in this way.
If her killer was indeed a sufferer of severe long-term mental illness then any racist tendencies are beside the point.
It is being reported that he was a neo-Nazi who had bought explosives manuals and books on how to make bombs and had done so for years — long before an EU Referendum was even thought of.
His psychopathy therefore had precisely nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit.
Will the Remain trolls apologise?
Only doctors and the courts can determine why he hated Jo.
Her death cannot and must not derail the debate over Britain’s future.
The Vote Leave campaign bears no responsibility, not the tiniest sliver, for any part of what happened and neither do its supporters.
Nobody should allow themselves to be bullied by such repellent politicising of an MP’s death and of mental illness.
We will honour Jo’s political commitment not by aping her beliefs but by fighting hard for what we believe to be right.
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