Murdered MP Jo Cox's report makes case for military action
Britain should not be afraid to take military action, according to a newly-published report worked on by MP Jo Cox before she was murdered.
The Labour backbencher and former aid worker had been working on The Cost Of Doing Nothing paper with Conservative Tom Tugendhat and had written the first draft in the weeks before her death in June.
That draft was found by Brendan Cox while clearing some of his wife's things last week.
It was completed by her friend and fellow MP Alison McGovern, published by Policy Exchange and will be launched by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown later.
Mr Cox said his wife had written at the top of the draft: "Britain must lead again".
He added: "Although she isn't here to advance that argument, she'd be delighted that her colleagues and friends are able to do so in her stead."
The report says that the backlash over the Iraq War has led to a rise in "kneejerk isolationism, unthinking pacifism and anti-interventionism".
But it warns that retreating from the global stage has "dangerous" implications for national and international security and even increases the risk of further global instability.
Successful examples of intervention are covered in the report, including the introduction of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq in 1991 to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's air attacks, along with NATO's efforts to protect civilians in Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing.
But it also shows the "devastating consequences" of inaction, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Syria's civil war.
Mr Cox said his wife's commitment to the issue "wasn't theoretical - it was forged by her experience of meeting survivors of genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan".
"Jo was passionate about this piece of work.
"She felt deeply that the UK had a duty to stand up for civilians threatened by war and genocide."
Mr Tugendhat said: "Britain has never been isolationist.
"It is in our national interest to be engaged with the world we helped shape.
"That means taking responsibility, and influencing events and intervening when necessary.
"To stand aside would not make us or the world safer, but leave us vulnerable to the whims of others rather than doing what we have always done - shape our own destiny and be a force for good."
Ms McGovern, MP for Wirral South, said: "We cannot simply look the other way in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
"Jo never believed that simply doing nothing in the face of atrocities was good enough, and neither should we."
