Wes Streeting

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry). I will pick up on her last point, which was a challenge to all of us. There is always a danger, especially when you are a politician and you aspire to a better type of politics and a better type of discourse, that people will go through years-old media interviews, and increasingly your social media timelines, and say, “What about that time?” The point is—this was true of Jo, too—that none of us is perfect. We all aspire to be better, but we have to work at it. If it were the case that everyone behaved brilliantly all the time and was always the best versions of themselves, we would not have the challenges of division, and if it is the case that we cannot change hearts and minds, and that people who are racist—or prejudiced in another way, or brutal in the way they go about their lives—cannot be better, why do we bother with anti-racism campaigns? Why do we fight for equality? Why do we do offender rehabilitation? We do so because we know that people are not born perfect, but nor are they born bad. The whole point of life is to aspire to be a better person, and to leave something better behind us—and my goodness did our friend Jo do that. I can well understand why the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) can scarcely believe a decade has passed since Jo’s murder, because when he looks in the mirror every day, the same image is staring back at him. He has not aged a day, and I wish the same could be said for the rest of us. In the short time this debate has been taking place, it has been really nice when people have got to their feet and opened by saying, “I did not know Jo,” because you did not need to know Jo; she always let you in. Even if you had not met her before, if you did not connect with her in some way, or if you did not have mutual friends, the door was open and she would let you in. In the short time we were in this place together, I realised how lucky we were to have become friends. One of my abiding memories of Jo is in the Members’ Lobby around votes, because she was never standing still. She was always running around—ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving—trying to sort some deal out, or trying to get some motion signed or some cause over the line. She was a real troublemaker, in the best possible way. It is hard following my hon. Friends the Members for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) and for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), but they have given me courage today. Ten years ago, in the wake of Jo’s murder, I was asked to say a few words in this House on behalf of all of us who were elected alongside her in the 2015 intake of Labour MPs, and I could not do it. I did not think I would be able to hold it together, and I feared I would not find the words to do justice to the truly wonderful and powerful woman she was or to just how much she was loved—and is loved—by all of us who had the privilege to know her. My God, do we miss her. Her wisdom, experience and insight are so desperately needed now in our national life. There is always a danger that when words are repeated often, they lose meaning or become a cliché. It is with that risk in mind that I dwell on those words, so well known from Jo’s maiden speech, where she said: “While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674-75.] I feel exactly the same about my community—my home—in Redbridge as Jo did about her community in Kirklees. Jo’s words were never intended to be sentimental; they were meant to be challenging. “More in common” does not mean pretending that our differences do not exist—Jo knew they did. She represented a constituency of proud Yorkshire towns and villages with different histories, different faiths, different traditions and different politics. “More in common” does not mean a politics without argument—Jo argued. Yes, she was able to work across party lines, but she was tribally Labour. She knew that change does not happen because people wish for it, or just because it is the right thing to do; change comes because people organise, campaign, persuade, demand and refuse to give up. “More in common” certainly does not mean a politics without courage—it demands it. Jo had courage in abundance, whether it was courage to stand up for refugees fleeing war, courage to demand action to protect civilians in Syria, courage for women and girls facing violence wherever in the world they face that violence, or courage for the people of Batley and Spen, whose dignity and decency she reflected to the whole country. To be courageous requires strength. Jo was strong, but there is a difference, especially in politics, between being strong and being brutal. Jo showed us that courage and kindness are not in competition, and they are two qualities that obviously run in the family. We are so blessed that Gordon and Jean gave our country two daughters to serve Batley and Spen, and now Spen Valley, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley gives true meaning to the words “honourable” and “friend”. It is a regular complaint of my mum’s that we use such language, by the way, because as far as she is concerned, there are not many honourable people in this place and she does not think I should be friends with any of them. [Laughter.] That is a consequence of social media. My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has warned that our country faces increasing polarisation. Her family, including Brendan and Jo’s two wonderful children, know better than anyone where extremism can lead. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we face a choice about what kind of country we want to be. The Britain that I love, and the England that I love, is open, confident, generous and kind. It is serious, but with a great sense of humour, and it is a country that loves an underdog as much as being the top dog. We are a small island that has led the world in every industrial revolution, and whose language and literature, and songs and science, are enjoyed throughout the world. That is the Britain that we have to fight for and stand up for. I think it is the Britain of the majority of people in this country, and we must not let others grab the microphone or social media feeds to paint a picture to each other, or to the rest of the world, that does not reflect the true nature of what it means to be this United Kingdom. In the week that Jo died, she brought together a whole group of us down in Wapping, where she lived, and we had the most wonderful party. There was a lot of laughing, a lot of talking and a lot of drinking. Awards were given—one day we should publish the list of the winners and ask, “Where are they now?” That was the last time I saw Jo. That brings me to the political culture that we need to live by. We all came together as a tribe on that boat, and what was remarkable about the 2015 intake of Labour MPs is that we spanned the full spectrum of our wonderful and sometimes slightly dysfunctional Labour tribe. At a difficult time for our national politics, but also for our Labour politics, we were reminded in those moments of joy and laughter how much we have in common. When Jo sat on the Opposition Benches and looked at the other side of the House, she did not see enemies; she saw political opponents. She also saw opportunities, because her politics was about seeking converts, not traitors. It was about trying to reach across the aisle, where possible, to get things done and change things in a progressive and positive way. That is the kind of politics that we can provide when we are collectively at our best. In this information and attention economy, where it is the sensational, the most outrageous and the most divisive language or words that grab attention, the tragedy is that the country does not get to see much of what goes on in this place—the all-party parliamentary groups, the camaraderie behind the scenes, and the overwhelming kindness of this place when people experience tragedy, as I found when I was going through cancer. The country does not get to see inside that Commons that we get to see every day, and we need to show more of it to the public, because they need to see in us what so often people here see in each other. That is what makes this country a wonderful country to live in. I still believe that this country’s best days are ahead, not behind. We have a proud history, but ultimately there is no hope in nostalgia. The purpose of our politics is to be a better path to a brighter future, where opportunity and security are shared by all. We will build that future if we live like Jo, love like Jo and remember that we have far more in common than the things that divide us.