England’s Devon and Cornwall police announced a murder investigation on Friday, July 10th, the day after the body of Ann Widdecombe, 78, was found at her home on Dartmoor. A 26-year-old “white man” and British national is now in custody, according to local police.
While the death was initially announced by Widdecombe’s management company, it became clear later in the day that police were treating it as suspicious. For now, terrorism, has been ruled out as a motive.
Widdecombe was a ‘Church and fete’ Tory MP who served the party in Parliament for more than two decades, including in cabinet. She then represented the now-defunct Brexit Party as a member of the European Parliament. Ultimately, she joined what Nigel Farage has described as that party’s “direct descendant,” Reform UK.
She described making the leap from “political homelessness”—pausing for selected roles in light entertainment—to Reform as a necessity, because “it is very clear that it is the only way to save the Union.” Farage praised her as an “extraordinary” and “remarkable, principled woman,” and says he is “deeply, deeply upset by the nature of her death,” adding that she would “not have harmed a fly”:
She was kind to everybody. Frankly this was somebody who gave her life to public service, to fighting for the things that she believed in.
