How does Kim Leadbeater describe grieving her sister Jo Cox?

Kim Leadbeater says she can talk openly about Jo Cox's 2016 murder but has never emotionally processed it. She sees every loss as a core absence wrapped in layers, and Jo's death carried extra ones: the media, politics, the criminal trial and the knowledge Jo was killed for who she was. Instead of grieving, she says, she has spent ten years going flat out to turn the worst event into positive action.

• Leadbeater had celebrated her 40th birthday with Jo in North Yorkshire six weeks before the killing.
• Leadbeater says she knew from the first phone call that the news would be bad and remembers the first year only as a blur.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Rest Is Politics (2026-10-22). Read the whole episode summary →

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