If It Looks Like a Leftist

What the murder of Anne Widdecombe says about politics in the UK

I wrote this one for American Greatness, in the immediate aftermath of the murder of British politician Ann Widdecombe two weeks ago.

When I saw the first picture of Joshua Kerry, the man accused of murdering former British MP Anne Widdecombe, I knew without a moment’s hesitation.

“This man is a leftist. The worst kind.”

I said so on X, too.

I’ve got in trouble before for suggesting there’s such a thing as “leftist physiognomy”—a distinctive set of physical features that instantly identify a person as a leftist, especially a radical one—but I’ll happily defend that position, no matter how loud my critics scream and stamp their feet.

The very first hitpiece that was ever written about me, four years ago now, largely focused on comments I had made on a podcast, about leftism as a biological phenomenon. I noted that the Antifa rioters arrested in Portland during the Summer of Floyd were all, to a man, woman and whatever the third thing is they think they are—“hideously ugly, malformed people.” My exact words. Google “Portland Antifa Mugshots” yourself if you don’t believe me. Tell me I’m wrong.

Granted, there are some pretty weird people on the right too, especially on the fringes, but as a rule of thumb I think leftists are an ugly bunch, and it has something to do with the ugliness of their motivations, which include “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialisation,” as the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski described, as well as a “titanic hatred of the well-turned-out and beautiful” (Bronze Age Pervert). There’s also some scientific research to back me up. One study showed people rated as better looking were more likely to identify as conservative and Republican, and to feel their actions could influence politics. Another study found that participants consistently rated conservative politicians as more attractive than leftist politicians, and that this translated into more votes, especially in “low-information” elections where voters don’t really know much about the candidate beyond how they look.

Anyway—there had already been some clear indications that the murder of Anne Widdecombe was a political killing before we knew what the man arrested for her killing looked like, or anything much about him. We still don’t know much about him, but I think we know enough to draw some meaningful conclusions.

Widdecombe was about as well known as a right-wing politician could be in the UK. She served for 23 years, from 1987 to 2010, as Conservative MP for Maidstone, occupying cabinet roles in the John Major government, and then shadow cabinet roles under William Hague, in opposition. Always a strong Eurosceptic, she left the Conservatives and joined the Brexit Party, which later became Reform, and was Member of the European Parliament for South West England until 2020. She then served as Reform’s immigration and justice spokeswoman. She was a staunch traditionalist and famously didn’t mince her words or back down from a challenge. She was not ashamed to be anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-law and order, and patriotic. She famously converted to Catholicism in 1993 when the Church of England decided to ordain women.

After retiring from Parliament in 2010, she became a celebrity in her own right, taking her pugnacious character onto the nation’s screens at prime time. She starred in Strictly Come Dancing—our version of Dancing with the Stars—and demonstrated remarkable staying power despite her two left feet, becoming an underdog fan-favourite and surviving for nine weeks on the strength of popular support alone. She was runner-up in Celebrity Big Brother, and featured regularly in a variety of panel shows like Have I Got News for You, Question Time and Loose Women (think The View), as well as documentaries. She even made a cameo in Doctor Who. She toured theatres and wrote books.

It was only natural, given who she was, what she was known for, and the current political climate, that people would immediately suspect a political motive when news broke that she had been violently killed in her own home. The police and the left-wing British government, however, chose to run with a different angle, the “burglary gone wrong.” It wasn’t a totally implausible alternative. Elderly people are killed during burglaries, intentionally or otherwise. Widdecombe was 78. It quickly became clear, however, how self-serving this interpretation was.

A local man was arrested. The police enthusiastically, lingeringly described him as “white” at a press conference: an obvious attempt to dispel rumours Widdecombe was yet another victim of a recent arrival to the country. The Police are increasingly tight-lipped about the ethnicity of crime suspects, for reasons that aren’t hard to guess. Shortly after, the man was released and police said he was no longer a suspect.

The “burglary gone wrong” narrative collapsed when Joshua Kerry was arrested and it was revealed he had probably travelled nearly 300 miles, from Rotherham, in the North of England, to attack her.

Nobody drives 300 miles to “randomly” murder someone. This must have been a targeted attack.

Reform leader Nigel Farage felt confident enough to say last week that Kerry was a “hard-left activist” who “hated anyone with an opposing view” and was “an intolerant individual obsessed with Soviet communism.” There had been rumours communist materials had been found at his home, and internet sleuths dug up evidence Kerry was involved with a political party called “Your Party,” founded by former Labour leader and doctrinaire old-school socialist Jeremy Corbyn. A female member of Kerry’s family, on the very day Widdecombe was killed, had made comments on social media about Farage’s security arrangements and whether they were justified. (Farage has been embroiled in a scandal over a £5 million private gift he has used to pay for increased personal security, among other things. He chose to step down and trigger a by-election in his constituency as a vote of confidence in his fitness as an MP.)

Those comments from Farage were made before it became public knowledge at the weekend, thanks to Britain’s Sun newspaper, that the suspect’s bedroom walls were found covered with news clippings about him. A source from the police told the paper, “The articles on the walls were all about Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, his party and their immigration policies… It would appear he had a profound dislike of the party, its leader and its policies.”

The British government has been largely silent about the case. 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.

That silence, a refusal even to countenance the idea of there being targeted left-wing violence, is bad enough. There are more sinister possibilities. Two days after Kerry’s arrest, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that police had foiled a terror plot against a large Muslim gathering. Twelve men—presumably “right-wing extremists,” because who else would target a large gathering of Muslims?—had been arrested. Mahmood told Parliament the arrests had “undoubtedly saved lives.” But days later the suspects were released and police said they “found no evidence to support anyone being charged with any offences linked to the alleged threat.” Reform’s Shadow Home Secretary, Zia Yusuf, called for Mahmood to resign over the affair, saying she had “misled Parliament” and was a “disgrace.” He stopped short of saying what many others were saying: That the government had cooked up the plot to distract from the Widdecombe case.

Far-fetched? Maybe not. 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 is 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 Anne 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 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-. 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.

It’s not hard to see where this is going—where it has already led, if the murder of Ann Widdecombe is indeed a political killing. It’s exactly the same process that led to three attempts on the life of President Trump, the murder of Charlie Kirk, an attempt by a transgender man to kill Scott Bessent and burn down the Heritage Foundation, an attempt to kill a Supreme Court justice at his home, vehicle attacks on ICE agents and ambushes outside detention centres…

In the US, at least, you have a right-wing government that’s in a position to confront the problem of left-wing violence and actually do something about it. The Department of Justice and the State Department are finally coming to life to tackle the radical left at home and abroad. The conviction of an Antifa terror cell in Texas that attacked an immigration facility has provided a strong precedent for pursuing other cells and putting their members in prison for hundreds of years. Last week, Marco Rubio held a meeting with foreign representatives of around 70 countries to discuss the threat of transnational left-wing terrorism. In a remarkable speech at the conference, Rubio called leftism a “revolt of the worst against the best; of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good.”

“It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, cannot create, cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can,” Rubio said.

“It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness, and have nothing else to offer the world.”

The speech could have been written by me—or by someone who reads my Tweets.

In the UK, by contrast, the left remains in power and probably will remain in power until 2029, which is the earliest a general election has to be called. A new Labour Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, was installed this week, without contest, and he’s brought radical leftists, including former members of Hope Not Hate, into Downing Street with him. A member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain too. The right is still on the outside, looking in. Nigel Farage could lose his seat, and even if he regains it, he will be subject to further measures from the “Donald Trump playbook.” Reputation destruction, spurious investigations, lawfare, harassment by the media and activists. And always the possibility of that other thing too, stalking his every move.

It’s going to be a long three years.