Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle has said we should all “love like Jo” after Thomas Mair is jailed for life after being found guilty of murdering Labour MP Jo Cox in the week before the European Union referendum.
The 53-year-old obsessed with the Nazis brutally killed Jo by stabbing and shooting her while she was campaigning in her Birstall constituency in West Yorkshire on June 16.
The attack on the mother-of-two was described by prosecutors as “nothing less than an act of terrorism”, while her husband Brendan Cox said he felt nothing more than “pity” for Mair.
MP Neil Coyle, a close-friend of Jo, said Mair murdered Jo in “cold blood”.
“He shot her from close range three times and stabbed her fifteen times. He planned to do it and has rightly been sentenced to life in prison – and will not be set free,” he said.
“Jo was a wonderful woman: vibrant, energetic, loving and caring. She epitomised all that was great about our country in her compassion for people and desire for all to have the best opportunities.
“The man who killed her was a Nazi sympathising coward fuelled by hate, racism and extremism. His views are the kind my grandparents’ generation fought so desperately to defeat. We must renew the fight against racists like him and stand together to celebrate Jo’s life and values.
“Let’s love like Jo and not let her vile, pitiful killer define how we remember her or live our lives.”