‘We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.’ Jo Cox said it in her maiden speech in 2015. A year later, a far-right extremist murdered her in her constituency. This June marked ten years since her death.

Kim Leadbeater is Jo’s sister. She won Jo’s old seat of Batley and Spen by 323 votes in a divisive and sectarian by-election in 2021. She has spent those ten years acting on Jo’s words.

In this year’s Holyoake Lecture, Kim will draw on her life and work to reflect on what a politics grounded in our shared humanity might look like. It is an evening for anyone worried about where politics is heading, and for anyone who believes Jo was right.

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Following Jo’s death, Kim carried on her sister’s work on loneliness. She chaired More in Common Batley and Spen, helped build the Great Get Together into a national weekend of community events, and has chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tackling Loneliness.

The decade since has brought a pandemic, war in Europe, and a tide of online disinformation. Politics has grown more dangerous for the people in it. Five years ago, Sir David Amess MP was murdered at his constituency surgery, and this July the former MP Ann Widdecombe was killed at her home.

Kim has warned that the threats and abuse politicians now face have put our democracy in a dangerous place, and she has faced that danger herself. During the 2021 by-election, after she told an anti-LGBT+ campaigner claiming to speak for Muslim parents that the Muslim community deserved better, he and his supporters chased her to her car.

Kim is vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Compassion in Politics and has backed the Civility Pledge, which commits people in politics to compassion, honesty, and civility. This June, she secured a Commons debate on Jo’s legacy, where she told MPs that ‘understanding another person’s fears does not mean abandoning our principles’.

Ten years on, Jo Cox’s words can at times sound like wishful thinking, but Kim believes they still describe the country she represents.

On 10 December, join Kim Leadbeater MP for the Holyoake Lecture 2026. Kim has called for ‘curiosity, evidence-based discussion and thoughtful engagement’ – evident throughout her time guiding the assisted dying bill through Parliament – and reminded MPs that ‘compassion is not naiveté’. Politics needs more curiosity and more compassion if we are to build a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail.

About Kim Leadbeater MBE MP

Kim Leadbeater is the Labour MP for Spen Valley. She was first elected in 2021 for Batley and Spen, the seat her sister Jo Cox had held. After Jo’s murder in 2016, she helped set up the Jo Cox Foundation and served as its ambassador, and she was made an MBE for services to social cohesion and combating loneliness.

Kim and our campaigns

In Parliament, Kim brought forward the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. With more than 200 hours of scrutiny from MPs and peers, no private member’s bill in history has been examined as closely or heard as much expert evidence, and in June 2025 it became the first assisted dying bill ever to pass the Commons. Humanists UK, which has campaigned for assisted dying for more than a century, supported it at every stage.

In the House of Lords, a small minority of peers filibustered it. Peers tabled almost 1,300 amendments, a record for any bill, and seven opponents accounted for nearly 700 of them. Their tactics ran the Bill out of time without the Lords ever voting on it, denying terminally ill people a choice the elected Commons had already approved. Reintroduced this year by Lauren Edwards MP, the Bill was defeated at second reading in the Commons in September.

Kim also backs our campaign for the legal recognition of humanist marriages – to end the discrimination non-religious couples face in England and Wales – and is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group.

About the Holyoake Lecture series and medal

The Holyoake Lecture explores an aspect of politics or a contemporary social issue as it relates to humanist and secularist values, including liberalism, democracy, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, LGBT+ rights, and equality. The lecture and medal are named after George Jacob Holyoake, the 19th-century humanist who coined the word ‘secularism’ and championed the Co-operative movement. Past Holyoake Lecturers include Baroness Joan Bakewell DBE, Robert Peston, Professor Kate Pickett, Professor Sir John Curtice, and James Bloodworth. Kim Leadbeater will be awarded the Holyoake Lecture Medal on the night.