When Jo Cox was murdered, a toxic political culture was blamed – but so-called progressives won’t say the same about Ann Widdecombe’s death
Daily Telegraph 14/07/26
When the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in June 2016, there was no hesitation in naming her killer’s motive or beliefs. “Political violence does not exist in a vacuum,” wrote one Left-leaning commentator, “That’s not political point scoring, that is reality. To deny it – as some have done over the last 24 hours – is at best naïve, at worst lethal.”
Jo’s life was tragically taken by a far-Right terrorist “after the most poisonous, hate-filled month in UK politics in living memory”. He meant the Brexit campaign which was paused out of respect.
You will notice that no such ringing moral certitude has been permitted after the murder last week of Ann Widdecombe (even writing about her in the past tense still has an air of unreality; it’s just too sad, can it please not be true?). Devon and Cornwall Police told the public not to engage in “speculation” which would be “unhelpful and distressing”.
Senior officers insisted there was no evidence the crime was politically motivated and nor was there a terrorist element. Chief Constable James Vaughan squashed any further objections when he crowed that the response was “clearly British policing at its very best”.
You didn’t have to be Miss Marple to think there was something badly amiss. Were police really suggesting this was a break-in gone wrong? The suspect had allegedly randomly driven from South Yorkshire to remote rural Devon and randomly murdered a random 78-year-old lady, taken a few quid and driven back again? I didn’t believe a word of it and I wasn’t alone.
Widdy fans and Reform supporters, still reeling from the savage loss of Ann, expressed their concerns on social media. We were accused of “playing politics” with murder and “weaponising” Ann’s death.
“Shut up,” snarled the online Left. “We are allowed to exploit tragedy, but we are the good, moral people. Far-Right supporters of Ann Widdecombe are vile and must keep quiet.”
It got worse. When Nigel Farage, who also mistrusted the police version of events and was clearly in an agitated state, said he believed his old friend’s death was “premeditated murder” he was accused of “political propaganda”.
On Sunday morning, Farage and senior members of the Reform team assembled near Ann’s home in Haytor, to lay frothy cream wreaths, bow their heads and say a few words in remembrance of their beloved colleague. It was an emotional occasion. The group was devastated; some were in tears.
Only a few days earlier, Zia Yusuf had had a conversation with Ann about the sentencing reforms she would be presenting at the party’s conference in September. Now, their formidable immigration and justice spokesman was not just dead but brutally slain in her sanctuary, Widdecombe’s Rest.
Ann was a lynchpin of Reform, a mother superior who wouldn’t tolerate sloppy thinking but who lent immense moral heft and experience to the party. Her loss was scarcely comprehensible to those left behind. Ann had been larger than life, surely she was bigger than death?
That hot Devon morning, the Reform leader was at his most statesmanlike, setting aside recent bitter outbursts and financial scandal, to deliver a beautiful eulogy to Ann (she adored Nigel while being one of his sternest critics). Who could possibly find fault with that loving act of remembrance?
Oh, but they could. A story in a Sunday paper said: “Sources close to Miss Widdecombe’s family indicated they were ‘very uneasy’ about her death being hijacked for political purposes.”
Well, firstly, Ann’s closest surviving relative, her nephew Roger Widdecombe, a vicar, and his wife Hannah were standing alongside Nigel Farage at the commemorative event, so they were not at all uneasy about their aunt being celebrated by her devoted colleagues. I bet they found it comforting. (Why should distant relatives who didn’t share Ann’s views be used to hurt her party? She would have hated that.)
Secondly, Ann’s whole adult life could be described as “political purposes”. If, God forbid, one of the many attacks on Nigel Farage had been successful (he revealed today he gets 300 threats a month), you just know Widdy would have been leading the mourning for her party leader, saying fervent prayers while denouncing the political class which had stirred up murderous hatred against him. I can almost hear Ann in that high, hoarsely fluting voice calling out the double standard with a favourite Widdy word. “It’s APP-PALL-ING!”
And she would have been right. Since her death, the appalling double standard has been evident in everything from the way media reports of the murder call her a “divisive figure” – she wasn’t divisive to more than a third of the adult British population who hold conservative views – to the way Sky News allowed broadcaster Adam Boulton to refer to Ann in the most grotesquely personal terms. “Old maid”, “spinster”, “battleaxe”, “virgin”.
A red-faced Boulton, such a reliable moral arbiter that his friendship with Peter Mandelson is a matter of record, was dripping with misogynist contempt as he described a woman who had two remarkable careers (in politics and entertainment) as if she were defined by her failure to find a husband. Would Boulton have portrayed a distinguished 78-year-old male politician, just hours after his murder, as a “bachelor” and a “complete shag---”? Unthinkable.
By the way, Ann would not thank me for complaining about sexism. She was a meritocrat who hated what she called “ghastly Nineties feminist whingers”. Still, the repellent Boulton episode (he was forced to issue an apology) made me think how much chauvinism Ann Widdecombe must have had to overcome at Westminster. Poor Gillian Shephard, a former cabinet minister, was once dispatched by senior Tory males to ask Ann to wear “a more supportive bra” when she was the least droopy figure (ideologically) on the party’s conference platform. The Widdy response can be summed up thus: Bra humbug!
Nor did David Cameron send her to the House of Lords where she so deserved to be. She was the best Baroness we never had. Ann’s Catholic beliefs and her robust Right-wing opinions did not fit with the modernising Cameroon agenda which was scarcely distinguishable from skimmed-milk Lib-dummery.
“I am back in the Conservative Party,” she told me with a mischievous smile when we met at the Reform UK conference last year. Ann was so looking forward to having another bash at government in her 80s.
And now she’s gone. Cruelly snatched away because the Labour government, much of the political class and certain sections of the media have been allowed to get away with recklessly inciting hatred against Nigel Farage and Reform. This is, without doubt, the most poisonous, hate-filled period in UK politics since Brexit.
“Political violence does not exist in a vacuum,” that commentator wrote after Jo Cox was murdered. “That’s not political point scoring, that is reality.” Isn’t that the true background to the dreadful murder of Ann Widdecombe? Sir Keir Starmer never stops invoking the “forces of hate” and the spectre of a “far-Right” Reform government which he paints as a uniquely evil prospect even though the party has mainstream policies which command huge popular support
His deputy, David Lammy, smeared Nigel Farage when he claimed that he had “flirted with Hitler Youth”. Other ministers and MPs constantly demonise Farage and his party as dangerous and “racist” (two of the top five Reform shadow ministers are the children of immigrants).
Most inflammatory of all is Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats. That bumptious clown told his party conference: “The greatest danger to the Britain we love doesn’t come from Tehran or Moscow. It comes from within. From a dark form of politics that wraps itself in the Union Jack while working to undermine everything that flag represents. Of course, I’m talking about Nigel Farage and Reform.”
So the leader of a mainstream political party thinks there are no consequences to saying Reform is a bigger threat to our country than Russia or the Islamic Republican Guard, which is believed to have launched 20 thwarted terror attacks on the UK?
That isn’t acceptable hyperbole, Ed. It’s grossly irresponsible fearmongering and character assassination. It dehumanises real people like Ann. And it is exactly the kind of poisonous trope that some impressionable malcontent might seize upon as a reason to target the most vulnerable member of Reform’s team.
Why can so-called progressives claim that attacks on their people are the consequence of “toxic” Right-wing culture. But when a figurehead of the Right is slaughtered we’re told not to speculate. Shhhh! Don’t weaponise the murder, there is no evidence it’s a far-Left terrorist attack – because only the Right does hate, don’t you know?
Ann Widdecombe was too shrewd an observer of the political scene not to know that something very nasty and unprecedented was afoot. In her final interview, recorded just 20 minutes before police think she was killed, a typically ebullient Ann loyally defended her boss’s decision to call a by-election in Clacton after he faced investigation for not declaring a £5m “gift”. She called the investigation into Farage “part of the politics of personal destruction”.
While many of us would insist the Reform leader should be scrupulously held to account over his financial affairs like any other MP, it is hard not to shudder in sympathy at the words Ann spoke next. They sound like a ghastly premonition. “There has been a game now for a very long time,” she said, “a game of personal destruction not just for Nigel but for lots of politicians that face this.”
I am in no doubt that Ann was a casualty of that game of personal destruction. She was a key member of a party that was getting too near power, so attacks on it were stepped up and its senior people came under threat. Counter-terror police now say she was killed in a “targeted attack” – as some of us always suspected, but we were shouted down by the Left who prefers to avoid what the murder of that marvellous, indomitable lady might say about their ideology.
Millions want justice for Ann and we won’t be deflected by police or officialdom trying to steer us away from unpalatable conclusions. In time, Ann may come to be seen as a free-speech martyr who died for her opinions. Only death could silence her, and we must be brave and speak for her now. We will go on speculating. Be More Ann!
If you stir up hatred against Reform, don’t be surprised if people in Reform get hurt.
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