Jo Cox would have been 'disgusted' with Ukip's refugee poster, says Stephen Kinnock

Jo Cox would have been disgusted had she lived to see the UKIP poster which depicted a crowd of refugees fleeing form the Syrian civil war as a way of boosting support for Brexit, one of her closest political colleagues has said.

The Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, who shared a Commons office with murdered MP, introduced a rare note of controversy into yesterday's solemn tributes.

He told a hushed House of Commons: “I can only imagine Jo’s reaction had she seen the poster unveiled hours before her death – a poster on the streets of Britain that demonised hundreds of desperate refugees, including hungry terrified children fleeing from the terror of Isis and Russian bombs.

“She would have responded with outrage and a robust rejection of the calculated narrative of cynicism, division and despair that it represents.”

Mr Kinnock was heard in respectful silence during Monday's hour long session, when the Commons was packed to capacity with MPs wearing white roses, the symbol of Jo Cox's home county of Yorkshire.

David Cameron described meeting Jo Cox in Dafur, when he was opposition leader 10 years ago. He praised her as “a voice of compassion, whose irrepressible spirit and boundless energy lit up the lives of all who knew her and saved the lives of many she never, ever met.”

Referring to her work with Oxfam on behalf of victims of conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria, he said: “There are people on our planet today who are only here and alive because of Jo.”

The Prime Minister described her murder, in her Batley and Spen constituency last Thursday, as “sickening and despicable.”

Members of Jox Cox’s extended family were in the public gallery to hear the tributes. They included her husband Brendan and their two young children, Cuillin and Lejla, her parents, Gordon and Sheila Cox, her sister and brother in law and their three children, and two of her closest friends, Sarah Hamilton, who knew her from her student days, and Brendan Cox’s former best man, Will Paxton.

The session was opened by the Speaker, John Bercow, who was followed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who described Jo Cox’s murder as “an attack on our democracy” and urged that it should lead to “a kinder and gentler politics.”

He added: “Jo Cox didn’t just believe in loving her neighbour but her neighbour’s neighbour. She saw a world of neighbours and believed that everyone counted equally.”

The Labour MP Rachel Reeves, a friend of the murdered woman, became tearful as she remarked: “Batley and Spen will go on to elect a new MP, no one can replace a mother.”

She added: “Jo was struck down much too soon so it now falls on all our shoulders to carry on Jo’s work, to combat hatred, intolerance and injustice, to serve others with dignity and love. That is the best way we can remember Jo.”

The Commons heard from MPs from every side, including the veteran Tory, Andrew Mitchell, Jo Cox’s co-chair in the parliamentary committee on Syria, the SNP’s Philippa Whitford, the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, the former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, and the Democratic Unionist Nigel Dodds, who spoke on behalf of the all the Northern Ireland MPs in Parliament.

At the end of the hour long tribute, the Speaker led MPs in a procession out of Parliament and across the road to St Margaret’s Church for a service of remembrance.