There’s a strange symmetry in the timeline of Britain’s last three political assassinations: Jo Cox was murdered in 2016; David Amess met his end in 2021; and Ann Widdecombe was killed this summer. Bookended by roughly 5 year intervals, these three murders hint at dark undercurrents in British society — although all three were the work of lone attackers with highly divergent ideological motives.
While Cox’s murderer was a neo-Nazi, Amess’s was a jihadi inspired by ISIS. Widdecombe’s killer, it would appear or is believed by the prosecution, is someone who possesses (or is possessed by) an “extreme left wing and/or anti-establishment mindset”, with a specific animus against the Reform Party. Joshua Kerry, the 28-year old man accused of murdering Widdecombe, has also been charged with a second offence of preparing terrorist acts — this was for, the police assert, travelling to Nigel Farage’s home in South London on 19 April 2025, where he tried and failed to gain entrance. Prior to this, Kerry is alleged to have carried out online reconnaissance of “prominent people and institutions”, which included not only Farage but also Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch.
All three assassinations took place against a backdrop by broader political convulsions: in Cox’s case, it was Brexit; in Amess’s, it was Britain’s role in the West’s “forever wars” in the Middle East; in Widdecombe’s, it seems to have been the mass movement of people across borders and the warring blocks this has created. Widdecombe had served as a junior minister in John Major’s Tory government of the 1990s and was an immigration and justice spokesperson for Reform UK.
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Despite their divergent ideological motives, all three killers had in common a commitment to maximum brutality. They showed not merely a preparedness to get their hands dirty, but a willingness to go that extra mile. Thomas Mair shot Jo Cox three times before stabbing her 15 times; this was outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, a week before the EU referendum. Ali Harbi Ali, Amess’s assassin, stabbed him 21 times during his constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Widdecombe’s killer was similarly unrelenting, pulverising her head with a hammer 21 times. She was in her home at the time of the attack, eating her lunch.
All three killings can be classified as “instrumental” in that the perpetrator coldly identified their victims as targets to be hit and snuffed out, but the manner of the hit in all three was ostentatiously excessive and well beyond the force required to neutralise the target. “Hate” is an overused term in online discourse, but there seems to have been an active malice in these three assassinations.
The undercurrents that swirled around the Cox and Amess slaughters are familiar to us. Indeed, the menacing figure of the black-clad jihadi brandishing a serrated blade or AK47 is well known, as is the figure of the furious, sex-starved far-Right teen hunched over his laptop in a hoody. We know decidedly less about the far-left subculture in the UK — although there are obviously parallels further afield in 1980s Italy and current day Portland, USA.
It will be of scant consolation to the victims and their families, but murderous political violence is rare. Left-wing political violence, of the lethal kind, is especially rare. One reason for this is that (western) leftists are often weedy and no good at fighting — or hampered by physical ailments and mental health “issues”. But that’s only part of it. More crucially, it’s because violence, in general, is difficult and that people, especially weedy leftists, have a natural aversion to doing it. Armies lament this fact and exert a great deal of effort in training their charges to overcome the psychological barrier against killing.
Another reason, suggested to me by a former counter-terrorism officer, is that there is a thriving left-leaning protest movement in the UK and that its frequent marching and larping — organised under the banners of anti-racism and anti-zionism — acts as a “pressure valve”, allowing those who participate to express their grievances and frustrations in a way that is more or less contained and non-lethal. It will be interesting to see if Widdecombe’s alleged killer, who will go on trial next summer, was part of this protest community and if so what role he played in it. Kerry, who in one picture has long hair, a wispy beard and glasses, “looks like a shut-in”, the counter-terrorism officer said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be a ‘very online’ chump”. What or who he emphatically doesn’t look like is Luigi Mangione, the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and it seems unlikely that he will inspire the same sort of creepy female fandom that surrounds Mangione.
If dangerous rhetoric really was as dangerous as its would-be censors claim, there would be far more violence than there actually is
Some online observers have noted that progressive or “woke” alarmism over Reform and the Conservatives has created a toxic political climate and that this has permitted the use of violence. If you think that Nigel Farage will usher in the end of democracy and the beginning of fascism, then it isn’t mad to resort to extreme measures to stop the catastrophe. Many leftists invoked the same sort of argument about the murder of Jo Cox: that Mair had been radicalised by pro-Brexit sentiment and that those who traded in anti-Europe rhetoric had blood on their hands. Indeed, this has become a standard explanatory account among progressives, who have even minted a new word for it: “stochastic terrorism”. The “stochastic terrorist”, apparently, has been aroused and set in motion by canny, dog-whistling demagogues who use coded language to incite murder. Anyway, Rightists, who were once rightly suspicious of “stochastic terrorism”, since it’s a bad faith racket to police speech, are now seemingly on board with its overall gist. For example, Farage and other Reform figures believe that a climate of anti-Reform rhetoric played a role in Widdecombe’s murder. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said at a press conference in July: “I can tell you about the climate in which she was killed, a relentless narrative from politicians and the media that Reform UK is a threat, a threat to be urgently stopped.”
The chief problem with “stochastic terrorism” and the broader effort to tie murderous political violence to speech which is deemed to be “dangerous” is that it’s drastically over-predictive. If dangerous rhetoric really was as dangerous as its would-be censors claim, there would be far more violence than there actually is. There would be tens of thousands of stochastic terrorists running amok, crazed and primed by the marketplace of nutty and deranging ideas that is also called the internet.
It is likely that much will be clarified at Kerry’s trial next year, including the grim circumstances surrounding Widdecombe’s murder. But it will also throw up the puzzle of Kerry’s motives and why, it’s alleged, he drove 265 miles from his home in Rotherham to Widdecombe’s bungalow in Devon to brutally murder her. Perhaps we will discover details and facts that will help us make sense of it. But I wouldn’t bet on it.