The daughter of a Labour MP has tweeted she ‘can’t stay quiet any more’ about Boris Johnson’s toxic rhetoric, saying Jo Cox’s murder made her fear for her mother’s life.
The language used by our Prime Minister - not a far-right populist or provocative journalist, but our Prime Minister - is just beyond words. The fact that the head of our government is actually using language that helps incite violence toward MPs is so beyond dangerous I can't
— Ellie Cooper (@ellieelizaa) September 26, 2019
Ellie Cooper, who is the daughter of Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, said she rarely tweets but had to speak out about yesterday’s dramatic parliamentary scenes.
In the House of Commons, Boris Johnson had dismissed as “humbug” MPs’ warnings that his divisive language feeds the extremist fringes that led to Jo Cox’s murder.
In an impassioned thread reflecting on this, Ellie wrote of how her world changed the day her mother told her of Cox’s death.
“I can honestly say my perspective of the world changed that day,” wrote Ellie, who was 17 at the time. “Before then, my mum’s job was something that kept her working later than bedtime when I was a kid, the source of embarrassing conversations at school, the reason we travelled to and fro between Yorkshire and London every week for the first two thirds of my life.
“It was never something that could get her killed.”
“I am scared,” she wrote, adding that she was “terrified” that if the language doesn’t change, “something awful is going to happen again”.
Labour MP Jess Phillips has addressed the matter in the House of Commons, accusing Johnson of not only fanning the rhetoric but of actually adopting its use as a “workshopped” political strategy.
READ: For the full thread, see the bottom of the story
WATCH: Jess Phillips calls out Boris Johnson on having a ‘strategy to divide’
Ellie Cooper’s thread has been retweeted more than 1,000 times.
“After the chilling scenes in parliament I just don’t think I can stay quiet any more,” she wrote. “There’s a group of young people and children that need to be spoken for.”
She said it was “beyond words” that the language she would expect to hear from far right populists is now coming from the prime minister.
“Whatever egotistical game Boris Johnson has been playing since he was at Eton, this isn’t entitled teenagers standing blindly by their positions in an attempt to one-up their friends any more.
“This rising hatred is costing people their lives.”
She asked Johnson to “take a stand” on inflammatory rhetoric or he will be “responsible” for putting lives at risk.
“Surely you can raise your head out of the sand enough to see that much?”
The House of Commons saw the matter discussed at length today, but Boris Johnson was not present and left a minister to field questions for him.
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