Why are MPs wearing white flowers at PMQs?

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy speaking in the Commons on Wednesday (Image: ParliamentLive)

AT Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, MPs on both sides of the House of Commons chamber could be seen wearing large white roses.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy – who was filling in for Keir Starmer while he attends the G7 summit in France – and Chancellor Rachel Reeves were among the senior parliamentarians to wear the flower.

The reason for the white rose was to remember Jo Cox, the Labour MP who was murdered on June 16, 2016 aged just 41. She was shot and stabbed by a neo-Nazi days before the EU referendum.

In 2016, days after Cox’s murder, MPs wore white roses to the Commons and placed one white and one red rose on her seat in her memory.

Now, 10 years on, MPs are once again donning white roses in her memory.

A memorial in memory of Jo Cox in the House of Commons (Image: ParliamentLive)

Opening Prime Minister’s Questions, Lammy said MPs would “remember our beloved colleague Jo Cox, and honour her memory for working to bring our communities together, celebrating the decency and compassion that defines this country”.

As Lammy was speaking, a memorial plaque in memory of Cox was shown on the Parliament Live feed.

On Tuesday, the anniversary of Cox's murder, her sister Kim Leadbeater said she would have been “deeply concerned” at the current divisions in UK society.

Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in 2016 (Image: PA)

Leadbitter, now also an MP, described the 10th anniversary of her “wonderful” sister’s murder at the hands of a neo-Nazi in 2016 as a “moment in time” to urge political leaders especially not to “push people towards the extremes”.

She said it is crucial to “push back on the divisive rhetoric and the dangerous language” but declined to name names, saying she did not want to give “bad behaviour oxygen”.

“Even though she would look, as I am doing at the moment, at some of the challenges we face as a country and be deeply concerned, she would not stop working hard to address those challenges and to look at how we can bring people together," Leadbitter said.

“And also to tell the real story of our country, because the division and the anger, and sadly, the violence, is not really who we are as a country. Jo knew that, I know that.”