WHAT a week that was. All the campaigning, meetings and commentary, suddenly hushed by the news that a female MP had been injured in an attack while on her way to hold a Constituency surgery.

We have been here before, most recently with Stephen Timms MP, who was stabbed in 2010 and went on to make a full recovery, so as MPs went about our business on Thursday, we told ourselves that she would be OK. How could anything too savage happen in Birstall, a quiet village in Yorkshire?

Then at 5pm the news came that Jo Cox, a new Labour MP who had impressed many of us, had been shot and stabbed by a fanatic while doing the duties for which she had been elected.

I can’t pretend to know the motivations that prompted her attacker to pack up a rucksack with homemade weapons and fill his head with hatred and stroll into town to kill.

I don’t know whether he targeted Jo because of something she said, some dispute that he had with her locally, or just because of who she was and what she represented.

I had no idea, in truth, until the details of Jo’s character and life emerged, just what a fearless campaigner for justice she had been, both here and abroad.

My interactions with her had been informal, the sort of chat exchanged by MPs from across the political spectrum – most recently I had complimented her on her toned arms, displayed in the characteristically bright dresses she favoured and she grinned at me, with her huge smile.

But as the details emerged, it seemed ironic that she had lived and worked in some of the world’s most dangerous places, only to die on the streets of the constituency she represented and where she grew up.

It is a tragic loss for Parliament, for public life and above all for her family, and it is one that has prompted many questions about public service and MPs' safety.

The truth is that all of us get threats, unwanted attention from the mentally ill, violently defaced election posters, poison pen letters, online abuse and the like.

Only last night, in a local supermarket car park, one of our more unpleasant local 'characters' told me it was a shame it wasn’t a Conservative MP.

But it has not, and will not, stop us from being accessible, reaching out to those we represent and doing the job we love. Hiding away would be the worst way of all to remember Jo Cox.