LABOUR'S KIM ON SURVIVING A DECADE OF PAIN

Every day is a fight

- BY ROS WYNNE-JONES

Inside Kim Leadbeater's office in Parliament, 5 and 0 helium balloons are gently deflating.

They are a reminder of the weekend the Labour MP for Spen Valley had in Harrogate celebrating her birthday, but also carry a more poignant memory.

Ten years ago, Kim's sister Jo Cox was the star guest, arriving last minute from Parliament, throwing off her MP's suit and embracing the party spirit in a neon tutu.

“We had so much fun that weekend” Kim says. “Jo wasn't an MP, she was just Jo. We'd rented a big house in North Yorkshire and we were in 80s fancy dress. Jo and I sang I Know Him So Well, our karaoke song, together”

Kim's 40th was on May 1, 2016. Six weeks later, arriving for a regular constituency surgery in a library in the community she and Kim had grown up in, Jo was murdered by a far-right extremist.

Her family went from sitting down together to watch the England vs Wales Euros game to being plunged into a nightmare from which they have never emerged.

Kim tells me: “I haven't been able to grieve. We just had to keep going forward, through the pain of it, through the trial. I needed to be there for my parents and for Jo's kids.

“Even now I think if I stop to grieve I might just fall apart”

Ten years on, it is glaringly obvious that Jo's murder has not been the watershed we all wished it could be.

In June 2026, two acts of gross violence have been ruthlessly exploited by far-right agitators. Belfast has seen families hunted down by race, there have been racist attacks in Glasgow and families in Southampton remain frightened after orchestrated violence.

Kim says: “When Jo was killed, it should have been the end - and the start of something different.

“For a moment it felt like that might be the case. But things are worse than ever.