No one has made a direct link between Britain’s Brexit debate and the apparently unaided attack on Labour legislator Jo Cox by 52-year-old loner Tommy Mair, who has been treated for mental illness and had reportedly sympathised with white supremacist groups.
But some commentators believe the language used by both sides ahead of next week’s referendum, particularly the Leave campaign, has created a climate that fosters hatred and could encourage violence.
“We need to think a bit about the tone of our politics and the way that politicians and the media talk to each other... and the way social media kicks in and amplifies this,” fellow Labour politician Stephen Kinnock, a friend of Cox who shared her parliamentary office, told the BBC yesterday. “It’s not a big journey from saying horrible things to doing horrible things,” Kinnock said, adding that Cox had not appeared especially concerned by threatening messages from a second man who had accepted a police caution in March.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the lesson of Cox’s murder “has to be that we must encounter each other with respect, even when we have differing political views”.
Other Labour members of parliament warned that some of the rhetoric used in British politics had become bitter and divisive.
“This isn’t a question of party politics, all of us have to talk about moderating our language,” said Barry Sheerman, who represents the northern town of Huddersfield, close to Cox’s constituency in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Sheerman joined Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other politicians at yesterday’s vigil for Cox in Birstall.
A couple of days ago, Charlotte Galpin, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said Remain and Leave had both used “fear stories” in their campaigns. “While Vote Leave has accused David Cameron of running Project Fear, both sides have focused heavily on negative, fear-based arguments to make their case - ‘Project Fear meets Project Fear’,” Galpin wrote in an analysis for the London School of Economics.
Her analysis echoed a cross-party parliamentary report on May 27 that said Leave and Remain had both made “misleading” key claims.
“The arms race of ever more lurid claims and counter-claims made by both the leave and remain sides is not just confusing the public. It is impoverishing political debate,” said Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Commons Treasury Committee.
Yesterday, even The Sun, a pro-Leave newspaper notorious for its use of exaggerated headlines and personal attacks on public figures,
raised concerns about the campaigns in the light of Cox’s murder.
“We do not yet know if Jo’s killing was linked to the fever pitch in which this Brexit referendum is being conducted,” the popular tabloid said. “But it seems too much of a coincidence for there to be no connection to the nationwide outpouring of hate from both sides.”