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* House of Commons at boiling point in raucous debate
* PM Johnson goads opponents who scream “resign”
* Stop treating each other as enemies – UK speaker
* Cox’s husband appeals for calm, warns over rhetoric
* Brexit chaos deepens ahead of Oct. 31 deadline(Recasts headline and lead)
By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper
LONDON, Sept 26 (Reuters) – The fury of the Brexit ‘inferno’is so intense that it could tip the United Kingdom towardsviolence unless politicians tone down their rhetoric, thehusband of a lawmaker murdered a week before the 2016 EUreferendum said on Thursday.
The British parliament reached boiling point on Wednesdaywhen Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his opponents engaged inhours of vitriolic debate over Brexit, with lawmakers hurlingallegations of betrayal and abuse of power across the chamber.
Jo Cox, a 41-year-old lawmaker for the opposition LabourParty, was murdered on June 16, 2016 by Thomas Mair, a lonerobsessed with Nazis and extreme right-wing ideology. She was themother of two young children.
Cox’s husband Brendan said he was shocked by the viciouscycle of inflammatory language on display on both sides, sayingboth sides should ponder the impact of their language.
When asked how his late wife might have responded, Cox said:”She would have tried to take a generosity of spirit to it andthought about how in this moment you can step back from thisgrowing inferno of rhetoric.”
“To descend into this bear pit of polarization is dangerousfor our country,” he told the BBC. “It creates an atmospherewhere violence and attacks are more likely.”
Brexit has illustrated a United Kingdom divided about muchmore than the European Union, and has fueled soul-searchingabout everything from secession and immigration to capitalism,empire and modern Britishness.
The rage and ferocity of the Brexit debate has shockedallies of a country that has for over a century touted itself asa confident – and mostly tolerant – pillar of Western economicand political stability.
Cox was clear that the language on both sides of the Brexitschism was troubling and that the United Kingdom needed to cometogether rather than tear itself apart.
Some on both sides of the debate are now using the politicsof contrived outrage to argue their point. Johnson saysparliament is betraying the will of the people over Brexit,while opponents cast him a dictator who has ridden roughshodover democracy to take the United Kingdom to the brink of ruin.
BREXIT SCHISM
Parliamentary speaker John Bercow told lawmakers on Thursdayto stop treating each other as enemies, saying the atmosphere inthe House of Commons was the worst he had known in the 22 yearssince he was first elected in 1997.
“The culture was toxic,” Bercow said in parliament. “May Ijust ask…colleagues please to lower the decibel level and totreat each other as opponents and not as enemies.”
Johnson taunted his rivals on his return to parliament onWednesday, goading them to either bring down the government orget out of the way to allow him to deliver Brexit.
Waving his arms and yelling “come on, come on”, Johnsonimplored his opponents in a raucous House of Commons session tobring a vote of no-confidence in the government and trigger anelection to finally break the Brexit impasse.
Opponents roared “resign” and some cast him as a cheatingdictator who should stand aside after the Supreme Court ruledthat he had unlawfully suspended parliament.
In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 52percent, backed Brexit while 16.1 million, or 48 percent, backedstaying in the bloc.
But after more than three years of political crisis sincethe referendum, it remains unclear when, if or on what terms thecountry will leave the bloc it joined in 1973.
In the uproarious debate in the House of Commons, Johnsonrefused to apologise for unlawfully suspending parliament andinstead attacked opponents for thwarting the will of the peopleover Brexit.
“We will not betray the people who sent us here; we willnot. That is what the Opposition want to do,” Johnson said. “Wewill come out of the EU on 31 October.”
He provoked ire by repeatedly calling a law that forces himto ask the EU for a Brexit delay unless he can strike a deal as”the Surrender Bill”.
When opposition lawmaker Alison McGovern invoked the memoryof Jo Cox and warned Johnson that the political culture wasbecoming toxic, he said the best way of honouring her memory wasto “get Brexit done”.
After one lawmaker Paula Sherriff told the House she hadreceived death threats, some of which echoed the primeminister’s own rhetoric, Johnson replied: “I have never heard somuch humbug in my life”, sparking uproar.
Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Britain’s World War Twoleader Winston Churchill, said he was appalled by the tone ofthe debate and it was the most poisonous atmosphere he canremember in 37 years in parliament.
“I despair, to be frank,” Soames, 71, said.
“I have grown up in a house where I believe the job of theprime minister even under very difficult circumstances is to tryto bring the country together and what the prime minister didyesterday was to drive it further apart.”(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Andrew MacAskilland Angus MacSwan)