Jo Cox Quotes

I’ve been in some horrific situations where women have been raped repeatedly in , I’ve been with child soldiers who have been given Kalashnikov and kill members of their own family in . In Afghanistan I was talking to Afghan elders who were world weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own Government and from the international community to stop problems early. That’s the thing that all of that experience gave me - if you ignore a problem it gets worse.

I believe it is time for the Government urgently to consider deterring the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilians in Syria through the willingness to consider the prudent and limited use of force.

The priority has been offering a service and making a difference.

I always back UN action where we can find it, but I do not think it should be a limit to our help. There have been multiple UN resolutions that say [to] Assad: stop killing indiscriminately your own citizens.

It’s not about creating an equal country, but it is about stopping the development of an underclass cut off from the rest of society. This focus could be a straight forward set of things like a living wage, supporting more effective pathways into work and an effective benefits system.

Thanks Diane. I hope we can all agree that this debate should be about Syria not UK party politics

Labour is in the doldrums and we have to ask ourselves why. Why, day after day during the campaign, we failed to get a hearing. Why the voters aren’t getting the alternative vision of a fairer, stronger, more just Britain that we should be offering.

If we can find the will I strongly believe we can still make Britain’s approach to talent a bit more X-factor (without Simon Cowell) and a bit less Downton Abbey.

It was the realisation of a lifelong ambition to be the MP for my home town. It was by no means the end of a journey, but rather the beginning of a new chapter both for me and for the people of Batley and Spen.

Unless we act to end the slaughter of civilians in Syria by President Assad, Isis will continue to find a steady stream of recruits from the Syrian Sunni population driven to desperation and radicalisation. In this context no amount of military action against Isis will be able to eradicate them. ... As long as these attacks persist these forces will not be able to focus – as many want to – on freeing their country from the cancer of Isis.

When the voters tell us on the doorsteps that they can’t picture our leader in No 10 we have to listen. When our candidates in London and Wales ask the leader to stay away, we have a problem. When the revival we were promised in Scotland with Corbyn’s “new” politics proves to be a mirage, we have to ask what it has actually achieved.

Some say we need to be more patient. What we cannot, must not do is sit back and hope for the best.

Many people don’t realise just what a valuable lifeline libraries can be.

After the horror of 9/11 ‘interventionism’ was increasingly expressed through the paradigms of ‘security’ or ‘counter terrorism’, rather than being grounded firmly in the protection of civilians. And then Labour’s support for military action in Iraq distorted a worthy principle with such devastating impact. The legacy of Iraq – an intervention I was wholly opposed to because it was not fundamentally about protecting civilians – still hangs over us. But Labour can no longer be paralysed by Iraq. We need to learn from its many lessons without forgetting the equally important lessons of Bosnia or Rwanda.

It bodes well for the future that young people are thinking so intently about political issues.