Jul 16, 2026

Widdecombe Murder Means Attacks on Free-Speech Swap Sides

Kit Knightly

Left, then right. Right, then left. That’s the way these days.

First, they pitch their solution to an imaginary or exaggerated problem from the left-wing perspective, then pitch the same problem-solution combo tweaked to appeal to the right. Or vice versa.

“Online hate speech” is the most obvious example of this in recent times.

It started with the left, who are now fully on board after months of fear porn about the online “far-right” spreading “misinformation” and “hate speech” about illegal immigration, peppered with staged riots and other “violence”.

Fully dosed up on mob-rule Kool-Aid, and safe in the knowledge that it was only the bad people on the other side who would ever be squished by the giant jackboot they were cheering on, the British left gleefully watched as the government made thousands of arrests for tweets and Facebook statuses and other similarly asinine things.

But now Ann Widdecombe has been murdered, and it’s time for the jackboot to switch to the other foot.

Within hours of the alleged murder, it was being reported the crime was “terrorism”:

BREAKING: Ann Widdecombe was the victim of a targeted attack, says Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of counter terrorism policing.

Our West of England correspondent Dan Whitehead has the latest.https://t.co/L7aBzUA66Z pic.twitter.com/KufD4cTXXJ

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 14, 2026

It’s easy to see where that goes: the perpetrator will inevitably have been “radicalised online” by “unregulated hate speech” or “violent content”. This is nothing new.

But it gets worse.

Earlier today, the Scottish Police announced the arrest of Heather Herbert, an Aberdeen University employee who had posted that Widdecombe’s murder was “good news” and they hoped it was “extremely painful”.

They’re calling it a “hate crime”, which is wrong. It’s hate, but it’s not a crime. Hating people isn’t, and shouldn’t be, illegal. Neither is saying distasteful or offensive things.

As you can imagine, all the pro-free speech right that turned Lucy Connolly into a sort-of Poundland Emmeline Pankhurst immediately rushed to defend Herbert’s right to speak her mind, right?

Wrong. Instead, people like Tommy friggin’ Robinson are suddenly concerned about violent rhetoric:

Make no bones about it, the left’s vile rhetoric had Ann Widdecombe murdered. https://t.co/Snv38YOWM0

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) July 15, 2026

We’ve seen this before. After the alleged shooting of Charlie Kirk in the US, pundits who had been previously ride-or-die free speech enthusiasts were suddenly waving the pitchforks for tasteless hot-takes and edgy jokes.

As I wrote at the time:

under the right circumstances, both teams now agree that free speech doesn’t mean the freedom to say things that are morally wrong or factually incorrect or…whatever. Which is actually the antithesis of free speech. Everyone believes in free speech they agree with.
Charlie Kirk; Or How the Right Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cancel Culture

And now the exact same thing is about to happen here.

Now would be a really good time for everybody – left and right – to have a collective awakening moment, and realise that empowering the state to arrest people for opinions and jokes is actually a REALLY bad idea, and we need to stop it now before it goes any further.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath.