Politics
Would Ann Widdecombe have cared about someone showing they hate her?
An Aberdeen University staff member has been charged with an offence after posting insensitive comments online about Ann Widdecombe‘s death.
Web developer Heather Herbert called the 78-year-old politician’s death “good news” on Bluesky. She also posted that she hoped Widdecombe had died a “painful death” before it emerged her death was being treated as murder.
The late former Tory MP and Reform UK spokesperson was found dead in her home on 9 July. A 28-year-old man was arrested and re-arrested in Yorkshire in connection with her death, which is now being investigated as terrorism-related.
Reform UK scramble to make themselves main victim in alleged Widdicombe murder
Ann Widdecombe: Herbert arrested for mean speech?
Widdecombe attracted widespread public loathing for her perceived homophobia, conservatism and general bigotry.
She held what many would consider backwards views on abortion rights, gay marriage and other elements of social progress. The Spectator put it with undue decorum:
On questions of life and family, she didn’t hedge or apologise. Her candour and unapologetic style had appeal beyond Britain.
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She never softened her positions to make them more acceptable. She opposed abortion and assisted dying on principle. She treated politics as a place where moral convictions were allowed to matter, even when holding them came at a cost.
That cost, however, is counted in the lives of discriminated queer people and those struggling to access abortion care. In other words, she was bigoted and unremorsefully so. (It’s worth noting here that the Spectator was, unsurprisingly, proven institutionally anti-Muslim and Islamophobic — fitting really.)
As 1990s prisons minister, Widdecombe notoriously voted against laws which would’ve relaxed handcuff guidance for pregnant people on antenatal leave to hospital. On Widdecombe’s say-so, the policy of chaining pregnant convicted women to hospital beds was continued, to much public outrage.
Referencing Widdecombe’s comments from her time as prisons minister, Herbert wrote:
I hope she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony.
In connection with the posts, Herbert was arrested and charged which raises serious questions about Police Scotland’s approach to protecting free speech. The details of the charge will be revealed at Herbert’s first court appearance.
A Police Scotland spokesperson stated:
We received reports on Saturday 11 July 2026 relating to a post made online. Following further assessment, a 50-year-old has been arrested and charged in connection. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.
Herbert told the National she felt the response to her posts had been “hugely overblown”.
looking forward to all the free speech warriors calling out this clear and chilling overreach https://t.co/k0cmH6Mg87
— Ben Smoke (@bencsmoke) July 16, 2026
What would the politician have wanted?
The oddity about Herbert’s arrest and charge over some admittedly grim online posts is that it directly challenges something Widdecombe’s admirers loved her for.
In the Spectator, Lee Cohen wrote:
In her tribute to Ann’s life, my friend, the marvellous journalist Allison Pearson, recalled how Widdecombe once told students at the Oxford Union:
‘Nobody has the right to live their lives being protected from offence or hurt feelings. It is an occupational hazard of living in society, she said. If you really can’t take it, become a hermit.’
She believed in free speech not as an abstract slogan but as something worth defending even when it costs something. When people in positions of influence spend years telling the public that certain views are not just wrong but monstrous, they help create the conditions in which violence against those who hold them starts to seem less shocking.
This is, by all accounts, a fairly standard liberal account of — or rather, defence for — free speech.
Interestingly then, Widdecombe — who was by all accounts a free speech absolutist — would probably denounce Herbert’s arrest. This point is even clearer given that it’s very unclear who exactly is “being protected from offence or hurt feelings” in this case.
Is it Widdecombe herself, posthumously? Her colleagues or peers? Or the public at large?
It has been a big week for such behaviour on both sides of the pond, when cartoonishly evil US senator, Lindsey Graham, died shortly after Widdecombe. The internet quickly welcomed his death too.
Graham notoriously wished death and destruction — invoking Hiroshima — on innocent Palestinian families in Gaza.
Ann Widdecombe: ghouls gloss over bigotry to praise “fun, feisty” politician as suspect arrested
The paradox of Widdecombe’s wishes
No doubt right-wingers and the Scotland-critical crowd would say that this is not the first “online hate-related incident” to lead to an arrest. Many racists and others, surely, have been arrested for online hate. But most of them have been targeted at individuals, or more often groups, who are alive and can be hurt.
Whatever you make of Widdecombe’s killing, whether it’s terrorism, or whether we should socially condemn “speaking ill of the dead”, this clearly is a free speech problem. The police has also yet to clarify under what law Herbert has been charged.
Remember the cottage industry in Western liberal media, who penned many joyful inches celebrating the bombing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his murdered family? Or those gleeful over the execution of Palestinian journalists? I don’t remember any issue with “speaking ill of the dead” then.
Whatever you think of the double standards, it’s clear that Ann Widdecombe would take issue with the policing of speech in either direction. The best way to honour her, for anyone willing to step over her bigotry, would be to remember that.
Featured image via the Canary
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