Published on 10:59 AM, June 17, 2016

Jo Cox MP death: David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn unite in tributes

David Cameron leads Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MP Hilary Benn as they pay tribute near the scene of the killing on June 17, 2016. Photo: Reuters

David Cameron has paid tribute to murdered MP Jo Cox, calling her "one of our most compassionate campaigners".

Speaking alongside the prime minister in Cox's West Yorkshire constituency, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Parliament would be recalled on Monday, and labelled her death "an attack on democracy".

Tributes for Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who was shot dead in the street in northern England, are displayed on Parliament Square in London, Britain, June 16, 2016. Photo: Reuters

Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed in the street as she headed to a scheduled constituency surgery on Thursday.

A 52-year-old man has been arrested.

Corbyn said he had asked for Parliament to be recalled to enable politicians to pay tribute to the Labour MP "on behalf of everybody in this country who values democracy... free from the kind of brutality that Jo suffered."

 

 

He added: "Jo was an exceptional, wonderful, very talented woman, taken from us in her early 40s when she had so much to give and so much of her life ahead of her.

"It's a tragedy beyond tragedy what happened yesterday.

"In her memory, we will not allow those people that spread hatred and poison to divide our society, we will strengthen our democracy, strengthen our free speech."

Vote Leave and Remain have both suspended campaigning in the EU referendum in light of the attack.

Cameron said: "Where we see hatred, where we find division, where we see intolerance we must drive it out of our politics and out of our public life and out of our communities.

"If we truly want to honour Jo, then what we should do is recognise that her values - service, community, tolerance - the values she lived by and worked by, those are the values that we need to redouble in our national life in the months and years to come."