LATIKA M BOURKE: Protect your democracy Australia, says widower of murdered British MP Jo Cox

When a politician is attacked, or worse, murdered, Brendan Cox’s phone goes into meltdown with a barrage of messages of support, love and care from his friends.

His wife, Jo Cox, was assassinated in her constituency by a far-right sympathiser who stabbed the mother of two to death during the height of the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016.

On Monday, when news broke of the attack on Helen Haines, in which Brendan Nugent allegedly rammed the federal Independent MP with his Toyota Land Cruiser multiple times outside her electorate office, Brendan Cox was underground in a basement, brainstorming with his team about how to try and counter rising anti-Semitism gripping Britain and the West.

When he surfaced for a break and turned his phone and downloaded the stream of messages, a familiar sense of dread returned.

“I’d describe it as a punch to the guts, that sense of just profound sorrow, of remembered pain, of present concern, hope that she might be OK and the fear that she might not be. And obviously it all replays all of the . . . because it’s so similar and then, of course, you go through all of the pain knowing what her family are experiencing,” he told The Nightly in an interview.

“It is completely similar to Jo. It wasn’t the corridors of power; it was back in the constituency, in your home, where you feel safe, and you should be able to feel safe meeting with constituents.

“And it sounds like Helen is incredibly focused on her community first; Jo was very similar. And Jo’s first name is Helen, so there’s a weird sense of parallels.”

Phil Haines told the media on Wednesday that his wife had had both her legs amputated as a result of the attack.

“What took place on Monday was a horrendous incident. And it’s . . . caused Helen significant injuries,” Mr Haines said.

“And as of this afternoon, or this morning, the surgeons had to also remove her right leg. But the good news in all this is Helen is alive, and she’s stable . . . that is the most important thing for our family.”

‘This is not who we are’

Another similarity between Helen Haines and Jo Cox was their relatively gentle political persona.

Both were admired for their non-confrontational, almost pastoral and community-minded approach to politics.

“It feels like a reaction to it; the scale of the shock is partly driven by that, because again, similar to the scale of shock in the UK when Jo was killed, this sense of ‘What the hell, what the hell is this? This is not who we are,’” Mr Cox said.

After Jo’s murder, Brendan Cox founded the NGO More in Common, taken from a line from Jo Cox’s maiden speech to the House of Commons, where she said: “We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”

The organisation is headed by Australian Tim Dixon who served as speechwriter to Kevin Rudd during the former prime minister’s first term.

More in Common conducts research and works on policies to try and heal social polarisation.

But in the UK, political violence has increased since Jo Cox’s murder with the assassinations of David Amess MP in 2021 by an Islamic State supporter and former Tory Minister-turned-Reform supporter Ann Widdecombe by an alleged far-left activist.

Brendan Cox said every Australian had it within themselves to determine the fate of the country in the aftermath of the violence.

“The question now, and the thing that Australians do have real control over, is how the country responds to it,” he said.

“Is this a turning point where people suddenly realise what public service politics is, at its best? The value of it, the need to protect, support and build our democracy, or does it become another sort of accelerant in that sort of violent, increasingly violent culture?”

He said while the motivations of Ms Haines’ alleged attacker were still being determined, a wider pattern of intimidation and a political culture of violence had evolved and was at risk of being normalised.

“Part of that is the online ecosystem that enables, facilitates and drives this kind of normalisation. I hope that this is a wake-up call. A moment at which people think, OK, let’s rebuild something,” he said.

“In the aftermath of Jo was a realisation, which I probably didn’t have as clearly before, that our democracy isn’t something we should take for granted.

“It’s not the rock upon which nations are built; it’s a creation, and it requires us to keep building it and to keep nurturing it.

“And unless we do that, there’s a real risk to it, and I think in recent years, or what we’ve mostly done, is attack our democracies and undermine them, and I think that comes with a real price.”

He said that the most disempowering feeling after his wife’s murder was the sense of helplessness and of not being able to do anything to put right what had happened.

He said there was both a broader macro political response required to try and rebalance the information ecosystem, including limiting hostile states’ ability to boost extremism through social media, but that individuals could play their part too.

“The fact that in Western democracies, we have allowed our information environment to be poisoned by algorithms that incite, facilitate support, and normalise violence and extreme content is totally absurd,” he said.

“It is carcinogenic to our democracy and our society, and the fact that we have, like a frog in boiling water, just allowed this to happen, I think we’ll look back on this as one of the biggest sort of strategic mistakes, both in terms of our own national security, but also in terms of the health of our society and democracy.”

He praised Australia’s leadership on bans on social media for teens but said that requiring default anti-algorithm settings, as proposed in the government’s Digital Duty of Care legislation, was just the start of what was required.

“My view is that organisations that are using algorithms to edit, choose, and promote content are publishers; they’re not platforms, and they should be held legally responsible in the same way that publishers should,” he said.

“And if they don’t want that responsibility, then they shouldn’t be editing; they shouldn’t be making editorial choices.”

Contact each other, and your MP

He said that leadership was also required at the community level to try and restore human connections.

“Often the people that commit these kinds of attacks are lonely, disconnected. They exist in a society which is increasingly fragmented and doesn’t have the institutions that bring people together,” he said.

“The rebuilding of our sense of community connection won’t solve these kinds of issues overnight, but it’s the underlying vulnerability which makes people more vulnerable to this kind of extreme action.”

He said that, at the personal level, voters could contact their local representatives to show support, whether or not they agreed with them, and consider volunteering and getting involved in politics themselves.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Mr Haines, Australia’s Governor-General Sam Mostyn urged Australians to invoke Helen Haines approach to community life in their response.

“Imagine what Helen would be doing if she was not the victim of this terrible attack. Reaching out to those who are terribly distressed by what has happened, who are still trying to cope with this,” the Governor-General said.

“We need to offer everyone comfort to get through this, to celebrate our strong and stable system of government and parliaments and democracy and be proud of that.

“Remind ourselves, as Helen says all the time, that Australians have good hearts, great hearts, and checking each of ourselves to ensure that we are, in fact, disagreeing well, not fighting with one another, not descending into violence and chaos and division.

“Most importantly, that we learn or relearn to exercise our muscle of decency.”

She said that Australians were asking how the nation had lost its ability to disagree well and with decency and were yearning for kindness and care.

Mr Cox said learning how to disagree amiably was key to building a better political culture.

“Looking at the profile of Helen, I’m sure the way that she would respond is by asking people to reach out to their own representatives and thank them for their service, whether they agree with them or whether they disagree with them.

“There’s been a big trend again, driven by the algorithmic application, towards a binary interpretation of politics where if you disagree with somebody, they’re evil, racist or stupid, or whatever else.

“And I think actually finding new ways of having deeper connections and conversations with people that you disagree with is really important.”

Following his wife’s murder, his NGO ran a project called “Britain Talks” which got readers of the right-leaning Express newspaper and left-leaning Mirror to talk to each other about what united them.

“We spend so much of our time talking about our differences; we’re incredibly bad at talking about our commonality, and I think ways of facilitating and building that become even more important in moments like this.

Asked if he still encourages his friends to run for public office given the heightened threats they face, he was emphatic.

“I don’t downplay the risks; I don’t pretend like those risks don’t exist. But I think in a period of those risks, the importance of the service is compounded,” he said.

“Women tend to get the most abuse, the most threats, often the most violence directed against them, and certainly one of Jo’s beliefs was that until we get a Parliament that better reflects the nation, then we’ll continue to create policy that doesn’t serve the nation,” he said.

“And even in the midst of and in the aftermath of what happened to Jo, I think that building and encouraging good people into policies is the best way of getting out of this obvious problem.”