The death of 78-year-old Ann Widdecombe should cause both ends of the political spectrum to recoil in horror and sadness. Instead, leftists are taking the alleged killer’s means of committing the act as a page to add to their playbook.
Widdecombe was discovered in her home in Devon, England, on July 9 by a gardener after an assistant became concerned when she did not make a media appearance, according to GB News. Police took 28-year-old Joshua Kerry into custody on suspicion of murder on July 11, tracing Widdecombe’s death to midday on July 8.
The alleged killer’s method was beating Widdecombe 21 times with a hammer. According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, investigators found communist literature in Kerry’s home along with newspaper clippings about Reform U.K.’s leader Nigel Farage. This was the party Widdecombe had been serving as an immigration spokeswoman.
……The Post Millennial’s Andy Ngo found a flyer from Palestine Action that he posted to social media platform X after the killing, in which the group was seemingly encouraging the use of hammers to harm conservatives.
……..The U.K.-based group describes themselves as “a direct action movement committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.”
“Using disruptive tactics, Palestine Action targets corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex and seeks to make it impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians,” the website continued.
What exactly is “direct action”?
The group explains, “Direct action means targeting the source of the problem and intervening ourselves. It means rather than appeal to institutions, politicians or any others to create the necessary changes, we create the change using our own power.”
“It means imagining the future we want and bringing it to the present.”
Palestine Action clarifies this is not civil disobedience. They are not seeking policy changes.
“Civil disobedience often involves breaking the law in order to force a government or institution to create policy changes,” the website continues.
“Direct action, which we employ, bypasses our complicit governments and forces the necessary change ourselves.”
Signing up for a workshop brings visitors to the group’s site and a page with a man swinging a sledgehammer.
Palestine Action does not leave room for interpretation. This violence will only become worse and more normalized until authorities step in.
We’ve gone beyond freedom of expression. This is just radicalism and violence being allowed to flourish.
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 “weaponizing” 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.……..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…….……“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 specter 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 demonize 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 dehumanizes 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 weaponize the murder, there is no evidence it’s a far-Left terrorist attack – because only the Right does hate, don’t you know?
……..The British government has been largely silent about the case. (Nigel) Farage was right when he also said that if a left-wing politician had been murdered and there was even the suggestion of a political link to the right, it would be 24/7 news and the government wouldn’t stop talking about it. The blame would be pinned directly on him.
In recent years the British government and intelligence services have taken to stage-managing the public response to traumatic and embarrassing events in an increasingly obvious way. It’s called “controlled spontaneity,” and it’s not unlike what the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service was doing to cover up anti-white murders; for example, the murder of Donald Giusti, who was kicked and stoned to death by a group of Somalis in a park in Maine. The response to the Manchester Arena suicide bombing is one instance where controlled spontaneity was used to divert attention away from justified outrage at government policies and the presence of Muslim extremists in Britain towards vapid public expressions of “unity” and forgiveness. Crowds were encouraged to sing the Oasis song, “Don’t look back in anger” — as if anger were an illegitimate response to dozens of children being killed and maimed at a pop concert by a man who should have been left tending goats in a fly-swept village in North Africa. Police could easily have been told to nab a group of idiots saying edgy things on the internet or WhatsApp. Such people are not in short supply.The internet was also apparently purged of all references to Joshua Kerry. The left-wing activist group Hope Not Hate—the group that doxxed me in 2024, possibly with the help of the intelligence services — deleted its web page about Ann Widdecombe. The page had described her as “homophobic and sexist,” accusing her of “embracing . . . dangerous and divisive politics” by joining Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Thankfully, there’s the Internet Archive to preserve exactly what was said. Still, evidence was deliberately being scrubbed.
We need not only speculate. Violence is now, without doubt, a part of British politics, just as it is now, without doubt, a part of American politics. In both cases, the targets are far more likely to be right-wing than left-wing. Farage, as Britain’s most prominent right-wing politician, has borne the brunt so far, not only of the standard rhetoric—Nazi, fascist, racist, etc. — but also of physical attacks in public. He’s been “milkshaked” — had a milkshake thrown over him — multiple times. In 2019, obese comedienne Jo Brand said, on the BBC, that she would have preferred if someone had thrown acid over Farage instead. “Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?” she said.
The BBC decided, somehow, that her comments were not incitement to violence.