Murder of Jo Cox

On 16th June 2016, Jo Cox, the British Labour Party Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen, died after being shot and stabbed multiple times in Birstall, West Yorkshire. In September, a 52-year-old local man named Thomas Alexander Mair was found guilty of her murder and other offences connected to the killing, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.

Mair had singled out Cox, a "passionate defender" of the European Union and immigration, because he viewed her as "one of 'the collaborators' [and] a traitor" to white people. The incident was the first killing of a sitting British MP since the death of Conservative MP Ian Gow, who was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1990, and the first death of a politician during an attack since county councillor Andrew Pennington was killed in 2000.