THE SISTER of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox says she will never agree to taking part in open surgeries with voters.
In an exclusive interview, Kim Leadbeater MBE also said much more needed to be done to protect politicians in the wake of Jo’s murder.
Speaking to Gloria De Piero, Kim, who now serves as the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, also spoke movingly about life without her sister and admitted she hadn’t grieved seven years on from the 2016 attack.
Revealing the measures, she puts in place to try and protect herself she told Gloria Meets on GB News: “For lots of MP’s things changed after Jo was killed around engagement with the public. Some MPs still do open surgeries, I don’t, and I never will.
“People in Batley and Spen fully respect and understand that. I think, unfortunately, because of what happened to Sir David Amess, other MPs have reviewed it in light of that. But you need to be accessible. And that’s the balance. And I want to be accessible.
“We do a lot of appointments where people will come to the office, but it’s all pre-arranged. We’ll do telephone calls, we do quite a lot of phone calls with people. Obviously, you can do a lot by email. So, there are ways of communicating with people. You don’t have to do that open surgery.
“I kind of get it where some people will say, ‘Well I want to be accessible to my public and all the rest of it’, but then look at what can happen. And let’s pray that it never happens again. But it’s happened twice now, and that for me is enough to know that that is not the way of doing this job safely.”
Explaining how she gets support from the police, Kim continued: “West Yorkshire Police have been absolutely amazing. I work with them very closely now around community policing.
“I’m always out and about in the constituency. I mean, that’s the other thing about representing somewhere where you live, I want to go out and I want to meet people.
“I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me. I have chosen this. MPs have chosen to go into public life, we’ve chosen to do our jobs. We don’t want sympathy; we don’t want pity. But I think it’s also important that people understand the reality of what it’s like to be an MP, or indeed a councillor.”
Kim said she carries three alarms to help safeguard against the risk of attack.
She said: “One of those I just carry just because I’m a woman. But then a couple of others are linked to the police. It is weird that that’s now what my life looks like. But equally, I’d rather have them than not have them, because the last thing I want is for my parents, or partner, or family and friends, to get that phone call that you know, no one should ever have to get.”
Kim said the current level of abuse many MPs face, risks putting people off entering national and local politics.
“Why would you want to put yourself forward for that?” she said. “And that worries me because how are we going to get good people in public life? So, you know, candidates, yes, I think probably should get more protection.”
Setting out how she’d like to see MPs’ safety improved she said: “There’s lots of layers to it. I think there is the actual physical day-to-day safety of MPs. And a lot has changed in that regard. There’s still more that could be done but a lot has changed. But the broader thing for me is around what our politics looks like, and by default almost, what society looks like. And how we conduct ourselves around particularly difficult, contentious issues where we do disagree, and what that looks like so that we can have healthy, robust, passionate debates, in a civilised and respectful manner. Since being in Parliament, I see some of that done really well, and sometimes, I see it done less well. And I think, therefore, as political leaders, we have a responsibility to think about how we conduct ourselves.”
On the abuse she’s witnessed other MPs endure she said: MPs would read off threats, abuse, online, offline, physical attacks on their officers, and they read it like it was just a shopping list and they’d come to accept it. And I think that’s a really dangerous place to be in. It shouldn’t come with the job. It shouldn’t come with any job.”
In her interview Kim also recalled the tragic day Jo died back in June 2016.
“My phone went,” she said. “And it was Jo’s husband saying that Jo had been attacked. As soon as I heard that, I knew this was not going to be good. I just knew. I started shaking. I remember getting in my car, driving home, and then the rest is sort of quite a blur. I haven’t revisited it very much. I haven’t had any counselling.”
On how she has coped: “ I guess since that day I’ve just tried to put one foot in front of the other to keep going. Mainly for my parents, and mainly for Jo’s children, but also for everybody else who was affected by Jo’s murder. And that’s a heck of a lot of people; colleagues, people in our local area whose lives were changed forever. And just to try and show that when the worst possible things do happen in life, and sadly they do to lots of people, you somehow have got to find a way to carry on. And that’s, I suppose, what I’ve been doing ever since. That doesn’t mean to say that I’ve been doing it particularly well, but I’ve kept going, and I’ll continue to do that for as long as I can.”
Opening up about the grieving process she’d gone through she said: “Loss is very strange; grief is very strange. There’s lots of layers around what happened to Jo.
Clearly, the political nature of her murder, and the fact that it was taking place in a very toxic political environment and culture. The fact that it was news all around the world, so not only were we plunged into a world of loss and grief, but the world’s media were on us as a family. If I’m honest, I haven’t grieved. I’m nervous about grieving, because as soon as you open that box, you can’t put it back in.”
Kim also opened up on finding happiness in her personal life with partner Claire Mullany
She said: “Interestingly, and I don’t think it’s particularly in the public domain, but until I met Claire, I’d always had relationships with men. I’m not a big “labels person”. And we spend a lot of time obsessing about labels. But I met Claire about 13 years ago now and we’ve been living together ever since. But prior to that, it wasn’t even on my radar to even think about having a relationship with a woman. I think sometimes that’s what happens in life isn’t it? Things that you’re not expecting happen, sometimes horrible, sometimes good.”
THE FULL INTERVIEW IS BROADCAST ON SUNDAY JANUARY 15 ON GLORIA MEETS ON GBNEWS FROM 6PM
