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Analysis
London: According to contested eyewitness reports, the murderer of Labour MP Jo Cox yelled "Britain first" or "put Britain first" as he shot her in a West Yorkshire street.
The murder of an MP, the first in more than two decades, was a horrific event: an attack on a woman, a mother, a compassionate activist, a committed public servant. An assault on democracy.
But that little, fragile factoid has the UK's political world holding its breath.
Cox was a passionate campaigner for refugees. And only the day before she had waved off her husband and their two young children as they took to a dinghy on the Thames in the 'Remain' cause for the EU referendum.
We do not yet know what was in the murderer's mind as he attacked Cox. He is alive. He may be telling police right now, though they may choose not to reveal it. We are likely to find out, sooner or later.
Britain First, a contemptible mob of anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam troublemakers, deny any link. Other troubling details have since emerged.
We do not know if the shout of "Britain first" shout was an invention, and act of bystanders' imagination or mistake, a rumour that metastasized into fact through the urgent cycle of social media and 24/7 news.
But it may be fact.
In which case, with a week to go until Britain chooses whether to remain in the EU, there is going to be some heavy soul-searching among campaigners – and among the media.
This campaign has seen febrile rhetoric over refugees and migrants. Brexiteers have stoked fears about their effect on Britain's culture and institutions, its economy and identity.
The row among the political class has been rancorous and peevish, and the public have noticed.
Those who worried at this political sore tooth, through speeches, in newspaper columns, in front page headlines and beat-ups, may have done it with the best of motives. Or, of course, they may not have.
But they stirred something up.
Until now, that something was a surging Brexit vote.
If they have a skerrick of conscience they will now be anxiously awaiting any inkling that it was, or wasn't, something more. That it was, or wasn't, fertiliser for a harvest of hate, and a death of a loved and loving woman on a cold Yorkshire pavement.
