A sombre prime minister yesterday urged greater tolerance in public debate and recalled parliament to pay tribute to Jo Cox, the MP whose brutal killing has caused shock in Britain and further afield.
David Cameron and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn added bouquets to a massive floral tribute to Cox in the northern village of Birstall, where she was gunned down on Thursday.
And with only a week until a referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU, which has split the country in two and sparked fiery debate on both sides, Cameron said it was time to “stand back”.
“Where we see hatred, where we find division, where we see intolerance, we must drive it out of our politics and out of our public life and out of our communities,” Cameron said.
Many commentators have questioned whether the killing could be linked to the referendum that has stoked tensions by touching on issues of national identity and immigration.
Britain is reeling from the murder of Cox, a popular 41-year-old mother-of-two in broad daylight at the height of the referendum campaign.
Both sides have halted campaigning as a mark of respect with only a week to go until the knife-edge vote on June 23.
Cox, a former aid worker also known for campaigns for Syrian refugees, was killed on Thursday outside a library where she was supposed to meet constituents in Birstall, just a few kilometres from where she was born.
Eyewitness Hichem Ben Abdallah, 56, said he heard two shots and saw the petite woman on the ground.
“Her face was full of blood,” said Ben Abdallah, who campaigned alongside the Labour politician before she was elected to parliament for the first time last year.
Police arrested a 52-year-old man, named by media as local Thomas Mair.
Another witness, cafe owner Clarke Rothwell, told media the gunman had shouted “put Britain first” repeatedly during the attack. “We don’t yet know the circumstances of this case but there has been an increase in vitriol, I think, in public debate,” fellow opposition Labour Party MP Yvette Cooper told BBC radio.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged British political parties to tone down the debate in the final week.
“The exaggerations and radicalisation of...language do not help to foster an atmosphere of respect,” she said.
Cox, the first British MP to be murdered since Ian Gow was killed by Irish Republican Army paramilitaries in a car bomb in 1990, had complained to police earlier this year about “malicious communications”.
In March, police arrested a man who was given a formal warning but later released. He was not the same man in custody for Thursday’s attack, the police said.
The Times newspaper said police had been considering putting in place additional security for her, with commentators wondering whether all MPs should have extra protection.