Jo-king Apart

The canonisation of Jo Cox, of whom even Nick Robinson had to admit on the day after her death that he had never previously heard, is sashaying effortlessly into the coronation of her widower.

Under ordinary circumstances, Brendan Cox would fail the vetting to become a Labour parliamentary by-election candidate.

Take a look at the circumstances of his departure from the employ of Save the Children.

It is laughable to suggest that his late wife might have gone on to become Foreign Secretary.

The present Shadow Foreign Secretary is out of step enough with the present Leader and with the present membership.

But even Hilary Benn did not nominate Jeremy Corbyn and then recant, after Corbyn had been elected with three fifths of the first preference vote.

Talk about a bad career move. Insofar as she ever had a political career.

It is quite likely that in 2020, Jo Cox would have re-joined her husband in the Clintonian world of the big NGOs.

At their level of that world, the pay is almost incomparably better than that of a perpetual backbench MP.

That level of that world also conducts its own foreign policy, often via tame Foreign Ministries such as our own.

Hence the presence at today's proceedings of the utterly unscrutinised Malala Yousafzai.

Does everyone where she comes from speak English like that? Was she chosen at random to be given a BBC Urdu blog at the age of 11? (Eleven, brothers and sisters. Eleven.)

If, like numerous of her peers, she had been killed by a drone, then we should never have heard of her.

And hence the fact that, in having raised well over a million pounds, the Jo Cox Fund has raised well over £300,000 for the White Helmets in Syria.

While the money continues to roll in, is that even legal? If it is, then it ought not to be.

As much as anything else, the suggestion that that organisation is funded by the British public constitutes a grave threat to the security of the British public.

Absolutely no one stood up in Parliament on Monday and raised this very serious matter. Never had the place looked more like a club for the sole benefit of its members.

Jack Buckby's intervention means that there will certainly be a contested by-election at Batley and Spen.

There needs to be a candidate without 20 years of a too perfectly polished Blairite CV.

There needs to be a candidate who is opposed to austerity and to wars of choice, never mind to wars of choice in a time of austerity.

Ideally, that ought to be the Labour candidate.

But if it needs to be someone else, then so be it.