Jess Phillips is also 'standing by'. Her family are also close to his.
She was on Marr or Peston yesterday saying he had demonstrated he was doing something about it and would change.
I actually feel really uncomfortable about the whole interview because of Jess's involvement with Women's Charity and her entire agenda.
She has a conflict of interest here. Her personal relationship with the man and her professional interest and position.
In effect she undermines a lot of what she fights for, perhaps unwittingly.
Worst still during the same interview she also admitted that she did not know the exact nature of the accusations.
Jess has been advocating others to believe women. Yet when it comes to it, what is happening here?
We've seen it before: my friend / partner etc couldn't possibly do that because I KNOW them. They do good. So those in positions of power are able to use their position and their connections to protect them.
And the woman who isn't in that position of power who made the allegation is ignored or characterised as being a liar or somehow getting it wrong.
The spectacle of Jess Phillips saying 'he'll change', grates. She perhaps has been put into this position by Brendan Cox, where she feels obliged to defend him out of friendship and out of love. Its one thing for Brendan's sister in law to do it, its another for someone in Jess's shoes to do it.
Why don't women leave abusive relationships? How do they defend it.
Jess has obviously chosen her friendship over the women she's stood up to defend so much. Given her job, that's incredibly problematic.
I guess she's thinking of her kids and his kids in all this, but it rather misses how it affects the kids of lots of others.
Shit position for Jess to be in. She's damned either way. But she wouldn't be in it, if Brendan Cox hadn't put her, his kids and her kids in it.
If these allegations were googleable at the time of Jo Cox's death, that makes it even worse. It was always a matter of time, because there is an inevitability that the Mail or another right wing group would go after it eventually.
Thus undermining every bit of the More in Common agenda too.
The more I think about it, the more angry I get. The Oxfam stuff is all the same.
There is institutionalised blindness and a lack of self awareness here.