Report co-authored by murdered British MP Jo Cox advocates for war
By
Richard Tyler
11 February 2017
A recently published report for the Policy Exchange think-tank is titled, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: The price of inaction in the face of mass atrocities.”
The report opposes what it complains is the “new anti-interventionist consensus [that] has emerged in sections of the main UK political parties and elements of the press.” It is based on a paper that was being co-authored by Labour MP Jo Cox before she was murdered by a fascist in the run-up to the referendum on UK membership of the European Union in June 2016.
Cox’s brutal murder shocked millions. But her death has been used in the most cynical fashion by right-wing forces within the Labour Party.
Cox was a supporter of “humanitarian interventionism” and was a co-founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Friends of Syria group. Before her murder she had co-authored an October 2015 article in the Observer with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, arguing for British military involvement in Syria on the pretext of creating “safe havens.” Cox worked on the original draft of her report with the Conservative MP and former British Army lieutenant Colonel Tom Tugendhat. The report was finished posthumously by Tugendhat and Labour MP Alison McGovern, who is chair of the Blairite campaign group, Progress.
The report was then launched at a meeting attended by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who employed Cox’s husband Brendan as an adviser. A video contribution from former Conservative Foreign Minister William Hague was shown, arguing against “knee-jerk isolationism”, and asserting that “ideological pacifism and doctrinal anti-interventionism are not in Britain’s national interest.”
Policy…