What surprises me time and time again as I travel around ... is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.
Jo Cox MP
June 3, 2015


THE words used by Jo Cox during her maiden speech in the House of Commons last year seem to have struck a chord with many people over the last seven days.


A week ago today, as many people were watching Wales play England at Euro 2016, word began to filter through that an MP had been attacked.


The came the news it was Jo Cox, the young MP for Batley and Spen, and that she had been shot and stabbed.


By 5pm last Thursday we knew Mrs Cox had succumbed to her injuries, killed in horrific circumstances doing her job.


Hundreds of thousands of words have been written and broadcast about her death in the days that followed.


I have to confess – and I suspect this is the situation for the vast majority of people – that I had never heard of Jo Cox before last Thursday.


We now know so much about her.


We know about her humanitarian work for a number of leading charities.


We know about the work she had done in her short time as an MP on the crisis in Syria.


We know about her family; her husband and her two young children.


And we know about the impact she had on those who did know her, and on those who came into contact with her.


All of this knowledge has created a picture of a woman who wanted to make a difference, and who wanted to do that through public service.


A jury will, at some point in the future, have to decide whether the man charged with her murder is guilty of a crime that has truly shocked the nation.


The justice system will have to answer the many questions that have surrounded this tragedy since news of Mrs Cox’s death became public.


But it also seems to me that something in what happened to Mrs Cox has also made many of us ask questions about the world in which we live.


Has politics become too adversial and unpleasant?


Did the EU referendum campaign veer too often into viciousness?


Has the growth of social media made us a nation short on tolerance?


Have we lost all sense of respect for those in public office?


It is good we ask ourselves such questions. We in the media need to look at ourselves as much as anyone else.


I have remarked in this column before how the internet, and social media in partcular, has given voice to extremism and intolerance and made it the norm.


The modern world seems to give more credence to those with the loudest voices than the often silent majority.


Some of us say things online, often behind the cloak of anonymity, we would never dream of saying in public.


And so we end up in a place where anyone with a different view to us is an idiot.


A place where abuse and vitriol is routinely poured on those who dare to oppose our views.


The referendum campaign has been full of it.


Remain supporters are all quislings and traitors. Leave campaigners are all racists and xenophobes.


The truth, of course, is very different.


The killing of Jo Cox should give us all pause for thought.


Not because she was an MP. Not because she was a mum with two young children.


But because there is something about this tragedy that speaks to us as a society.


Sometimes we need to be reminded there is more good in this world than there is evil.


And that respect for the opinions of others is the beating heart of democracy.


And that we have more in common than things that divide us.