The Murder of Anne Widdicombe

 Ann Widdecombe wasn't exactly everyone's cup of tea. She had opinions. Strong ones. Sometimes controversial ones. Sometimes deeply unpopular ones. Plenty of people spent years arguing with her, mocking her, shouting at the television every time she appeared on Question Time.

Fine. That's politics.

But if your first reaction to hearing that someone has been murdered is "LOL" or "Good riddance", I think we've wandered into some fairly grim territory.

What exactly are you celebrating?

That someone was violently killed?

That another human being died terrified?

That somebody's family got the phone call no family ever wants?

I've seen people online acting like this is some sort of football result. "Our side won." No. Nobody won. A woman is dead.

And before anyone starts...

"No, but she said horrible things."

Probably. She said plenty of things I disagreed with. Vigorously. That's still a million miles away from concluding that being murdered is somehow an appropriate ending.

"But she had views I disagreed with"...

Yes. She did.

So do millions of people.

I disagreed with Ann Widdecombe on plenty. I wouldn't have voted for her. I challenged many of her opinions. I thought she was wrong on a number of issues.

If you genuinely believe in human rights, compassion and dignity, those values don't suddenly switch off because the victim voted differently to you.

Otherwise they're not principles.

They're just team colours.

What really amazes me is how many of the same people who spend every other day talking about kindness, empathy and "being better" suddenly morph into medieval villagers the moment it's someone they dislike.

Apparently compassion now comes with terms and conditions.

Some exclusions apply.

The internet has made this worse. Everything has become performance. People aren't just expressing relief that a political figure has gone—they're trying to outdo each other in being the most gleefully monstrous because likes and reposts reward outrage.

Congratulations. You got your engagement.

You also publicly announced that your moral compass can be bought for the price of a few heart emojis.

You can think Ann Widdecombe was wrong about almost everything.

You can think she caused harm.

You can think history won't be kind to her.

None of that requires you to celebrate a violent death.

If your politics only values human life when it's politically convenient, your politics needs servicing.

Death isn't a punchline.

Murder isn't karma.

And if seeing someone brutally killed fills you with joy rather than reflection, maybe the person whose values need examining isn't the one in the obituary.

And my view of Ann? A woman who speaks her mind is absolutely fine by me- even when I think she's completely wrong. That's what free speech is. It means people get to express views we don't like without fearing violence in return. The answer to bad ideas is better arguments, not a police cordon.

And while we're at it, can we retire the lazy habit of flattening people into cartoon villains?

I genuinely don't think Ann Widdecombe was a homophobe. At least not by the end of her life- I think she softened considerably in the 2010s.

Was she opposed to same-sex marriage? Yes. She said so. I disagreed with her on that, and I still do. But Ann was also a devout Catholic, and her views on marriage came from that religious framework. You can disagree strongly with someone's interpretation of their faith- and many people do - while still recognising that a person's beliefs are more complicated than simply labelling them as hateful.

But there's a difference between disagreeing with someone's views on marriage and concluding they hated gay people.

She was close friends with broadcaster Iain Dale, who is openly gay. She happily competed on Strictly Come Dancingwith two openly gay judges on the panel, and she went on to tour with Craig Revel Horwood, appeared alongside him in pantomime, and popped up with him on various television shows for years afterwards.

Does that automatically prove she was right about everything? Of course not.

Does it automatically mean every LGBT person would have felt comfortable with her views? Also no.

But life is more nuanced than Twitter would have you believe. People are capable of holding religious convictions that I think are outdated while still treating individuals with warmth, friendship and respect.

I'm perfectly entitled to think she was wrong on same-sex marriage. I do.

I'm not entitled to invent a more convenient version of her because it makes a better villain.

If we're serious about challenging prejudice, we should also be serious about describing people accurately, even when they're no longer around to defend themselves.

When Jo Cox was murdered in 2016, and when Sir David Amess was murdered in 2021, there was a huge sense of shock and grief across the country. People of all political backgrounds came together to say: "Hang on. A human being has been killed."

You didn't have this same level of gleeful point-scoring everywhere you looked.

People remembered that, before someone was a politician, they were a person.

They had a family.

They had friends.

They had people who loved them.

Somewhere along the way, social media has made a lot of people forget that.

We've turned human beings into avatars. Into profile pictures. Into political tribes. Into "the other side". And once someone gets put in that box, some people seem to think basic decency no longer applies.

You can despise someone's politics and still recognise their humanity.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Actually, that's the whole point of having principles.

It's easy to show compassion to people you agree with. It's easy to be kind when it's someone from your own political tribe. The real test is whether you can extend that same humanity to someone whose opinions make your blood boil.

Because if we only believe in dignity for the people we like, then we don't really believe in dignity at all.

We just believe in favourites.

And quite frankly, I don't remember Ann herself ever celebrating somebody's death.

That, to me, is the really uncomfortable part of this.

Some of the people now cheering have spent years describing Ann as cruel, heartless or lacking compassion. Yet the moment something horrific happens to her, they respond with exactly the kind of cruelty they claim to despise.

At what point does condemning someone's lack of empathy become a performance?

Because if your reaction to someone's murder is celebration, mockery or jokes, you need to ask yourself a serious question: are you actually opposing cruelty, or are you just upset when cruelty is aimed at your side?

You don't become morally superior by having the "right" opinions.

You don't get a free pass to abandon every value you claim to hold because the person who died was someone you disliked.

And here's the irony: some people are trying so hard to prove Ann was a terrible person that they've ended up displaying behaviour far more ugly than the thing they're accusing her of.

You can challenge someone's beliefs.

You can criticise their record.

You can campaign against their ideas.

But cheering when a person is murdered? That isn't justice. That isn't progress. That isn't a victory.

That's just another person losing their humanity.

Jo Cox's murder was tragic.

David Amess's murder was tragic.

Ann Widdecombe's murder is tragic.

Three different people. Three different political journeys. Three different sets of beliefs.

But one thing connects them all: they were human beings.

Their worth was not determined by whether we agreed with them. Their right to live a safe life was not dependent on whether they held the "correct" opinions.

That is the bare minimum we should be able to agree on.

You don't have to like someone to mourn their death.

You don't have to agree with someone to recognise their humanity.

And if we lose that ability, if we start deciding whose lives are worthy of compassion based purely on whether we like their politics, then we have lost something far more important than any political argument.

And this is where I think both extremes need to have a long, hard look at themselves.

The far left and the far right might pretend they're completely different worlds, but when it comes to dehumanising people they disagree with, they can be disturbingly similar.

One side convinces itself that anyone who disagrees with them is evil.

The other side convinces itself that anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy.

And once you stop seeing people as people, once you start viewing them purely as a label or a political category, it's a very short journey to losing all compassion.

The far right has a long and ugly history of hatred and exclusion.

The far left can also fall into a dangerous mindset where people are judged, condemned and treated as beyond redemption for holding the wrong opinions.

Different ideologies. Different arguments. But the same poisonous idea: that some people are less deserving of dignity than others.

And I reject that completely.

You don't have to agree with someone.

You don't have to like someone's views.

You don't even have to respect their arguments.

But you should still be able to recognise that they are a human being.

Because the moment you start celebrating suffering simply because the person suffering is on "the other side", you've already lost the moral argument.