Helen Joanne "Jo" Cox (22 June 1974 – 16 June 2016) was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. She was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Batley and Spen having retained the seat for Labour in the 2015 general election. On 16 June 2016, Cox was shot and stabbed multiple times in Birstall, West Yorkshire, where she had been holding a meeting with her constituents. She was left in a critical condition and died from her injuries in hospital a few hours later. A 52-year-old man was arrested in connection with the attack.Cox was born on 22 June 1974 in Batley, West Yorkshire, England. She was educated at Heckmondwike Grammar School, a state grammar school in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire. She studied social and political studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1995. Cox was head of policy for Oxfam and was an adviser to Sarah Brown and Baroness Kinnock. She was national chair of the Labour Women's Network and a senior adviser to the Freedom Fund, an anti-slavery charity.
Cox was nominated by the Labour Party to contest the Batley and Spen seat being vacated by Mike Wood in the 2015 UK general election. She was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. However, in the election she voted for Liz Kendall, and announced on 6 May 2016 after the local elections that she and fellow MP Neil Coyle regretted nominating Corbyn.In October 2015 she co-authored, with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, an article in The Observer arguing that British military forces could help achieve an ethical solution to the conflict in Syria.[14] During that month Cox launched the All Party Parliamentary Friends of Syria group, becoming its chair. In the subsequent vote for UK military intervention in Syria she abstained, as she did not consider the intervention to be part of an effective comprehensive strategy to tackle the Syrian conflict including dealing with President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Civil War was one of Cox's main campaigning issues.
Cox supported the 'Remain' campaign during the 2016 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Following her death, campaigning in the EU referendum was suspended for the day on both sides as a mark of respect. Cox was married to Brendan Cox. They had two children who were aged three and five at the time of Jo Cox's death. The family lived on a converted barge moored near Tower Bridge. On 16 June 2016, Cox was fatally shot and stabbed outside a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire upon leaving a constituency surgery.According to eye witnesses, she was shot three times – once near the head – and stabbed multiple times by a man who shouted "Britain first" as he carried out the attack. It was possibly a reference to the far-right Britain First party; The local who claimed to have heard the shout, Hicham Ben Abdallah, later admitted that he had not heard any shout. however, the party issued a statement denying any involvement or encouragement in the attack and suggested that the phrase "could have been a slogan rather than a reference to our party". The attack also left a 77-year-old man with a stab wound.
Four hours after the incident, West Yorkshire Police announced that Cox had died at Leeds General Infirmary. She was the first sitting Member of Parliament to be killed since Ian Gow was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army in 1990. A 52-year-old man, identified by The Daily Telegraph and The Independent as Thomas "Tommy" Mair, was arrested. Early speculation was that Cox's support for the Remain campaign in the EU referendum could have been motivation for the attack.
