Batley By-Election? No Contest is No Tribute!

Many of the tributes to Jo Cox MP have noted that her murder is an attack on democracy.

A fair comment – but let’s not use the murder to obscure the whole point of democracy -that people are given a fair and free choice in any vote.

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Hence I am unconvinced that the denial of any choice in the consequent by-election is in any sense a ‘tribute.’

Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapp said ‘I hope that in the sad by-election to follow, Jo Cox’s constituency is left uncontested as a tribute to Jo’s extraordinary public service….” The Lib Dems and Ukip have joined the Conservative Party to announce they will not contest the by-election in Batley and Spen resulting from the death of Jo Cox.

Lib Dems and Ukip will not contest by-election caused by Jo Cox death

No matter what her views on other issues, I find it hard to believe Ms. Cox would welcome this. But I don’t know.

I can only think back.

Think of previous examples of distinguished parliamentarians struck down in their prime….

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 Ian Gow    Airey Neave

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…. people like Ian Gow and Airey Neave, brutally murdered by terrorists.

Nor are they the only MPs slain in acts as equally wicked as, but much more purposeful than, the crime committed in the UK this week.

Less prominent, but just as much victims of assassination, Robert Bradford and Tony Berry, died, not at the hands of someone, like the accused in the Cox case, known to have been afflicted by mental illness…

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 Accused Mair

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…but by those dedicated to hate, and treason.

Every decent person deplored their deaths, but none back then proposed that the constituents they represented should have no option in the elections held to choose their successors.  

And as noted yesterday…

• Cuius Bono? Europhiliacs Exploiting Murder To Muzzle Patriots

…. it would be a shameful disservice to future generations of Britons if the worst elements in the land, like The Guardian’s leftist hacks, managed to distort or subdue proper debate, in the last few days of the Brexit campaign, by exploitation of the tragedy.

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A particularly vicious anti-UKIP diatribe by some blonde nonenity called Marina Hyde appeared in that abominable newspaper today, kicking off just such a malign endeavour. So Britain, are you ready to enter the United Kingdom of Ukip?

Hyde’s venom may well set the deplorable tone I fear we’ll hear a lot more of, before the 23rd.

I’m glad to say others, who do not share my conservative standpoint, have also noticed this very unpleasant likelihood .

JO COX: DON’T USE THIS TRAGEDY TO TAME DEMOCRACY