Ann Widdecombe murder investigation taken over by counter-terror police – The Latest

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0:42It looked initially like this was not viewed as a terror fence, but that's all shifted. It is a messy picture. It is one of these things where this crime story, which needs to be reported very responsibly and straightforwardly, comes into collision with a very opinion-driven news and political cycle. Farage. He says, one thing I wouldn't speculate about is the thing which he then goes on to speculate.

1:03Archie Bland:From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. On Friday, we had the very shocking news that Anne Whiddicombe, the former Tory MP, junior minister and now Reform UK spokesperson, as was, had been murdered at her home in Devon. Archie Bland, you're our head of national news. This has now escalated, hasn't it? We've had the announcement that this has been handed from Devon police, where she lived, to counter terror police, who are now taking this on. What do we know about that? That's right. So we know that in the first place, this was under investigation by counter-terror police.

1:42And the conclusion was reached at that stage that there did not appear to be a terrorist motive in this case. And it was passed back to the conventional police.

1:51Archie Bland:Yeah. But the situation has evolved since then. A second suspect, not the man who was originally arrested, has now been arrested. And the case is being investigated by counter-terror police specifically. He's also been arrested on suspicion of terror offences. as well as the initial murder suspicion that has now been drawn into that arena more generally as well. So it looked initially like this was not viewed as a terror offence, but that's all shifted. So that suggests that something has been uncovered to do with potential motive. Do we know anything about that? What have the police said at this stage?

2:24So what we can say is what would typically be the case, which is that if somebody appears to be ideologically motivated, and if they appear to be motivated with an intention of influencing or intimidating politicians or the public, in their action, then that can be classed as a terrorist offence. But we can't say specifically what the evidence is in this case that has drawn the police to that conclusion, at least at this stage.

2:47Archie Bland:Okay. What can we say about the suspect at this stage? So we know that he's 28 years old and that he was arrested at an address in Rotherham. Which is very far from Devon, we should say. Absolutely. A long drive, which has been reported in the press. And it was reported that neighbours saw on the day of Anne Whittacombe's death, him getting into a red car and that he had some kind of pole that he took with him on that journey. But again, because of the status of the investigation and the fact that we're awaiting a charging decision, we still don't have that much that we can say at this point. Right.

3:21Archie Bland:So let's backtrack a little bit, because on Friday morning, I was listening to the morning radio at home and there was a sort of fairly standard political obit to Anne Whittacombe, you know, who died in sudden unexpected circumstances at the age of 78, but no suggestion at that time that there was any suspicious foul play. But it became clear by Friday afternoon that this was being treated as a murder investigation, which I think was met with great shock in the Guardian newsroom. The coverage over the weekend has felt a little messy, I think we can say, in that there has been lots of speculation in the media about the circumstances, things that ordinarily would not be published with a live investigation at play with multiple police forces.

4:08Archie Bland:And yet these official lines from the police coming out sort of urging caution and saying that this is both upsetting to her family and also disruptive to the investigation. Yeah, and it is a messy picture, to be sure. I mean, we have a couple of different things going on at the same time. One is a evolving picture of the police investigation and it is relatively unusual, we should say, for a terrorist motivation to appear to have been ruled out only for the case to ultimately return to the hands of counter-terror police. We should say that the case has not been declared a terrorist incident at this point but that it is only under investigation as such.

4:45But at the same time as you have all of that going on, you also have the complicated situation of politicians talking about the case and making, on the one hand, I think quite reasonable general observations about the dangers that politicians face as part of their public facing role and how seriously we should take that and on the other hand as with Nigel Farage and others lines that were at the very least at that point unproven and were viewed by the police and by other politicians as perhaps being premature to start putting out publicly and unhelpful to the process to the investigation so it is one of these things where this crime story, which needs to be reported very responsibly and straightforwardly, comes into collision with a very opinion-driven news and political cycle.

5:31Archie Bland:And on that, on Farage, I mean, Nigel Farage travelled to her home in Devon with a floral tribute. He spoke very kindly of her political legacy, of their personal relationship, what she'd done in her long career in politics. But he also put out speculation about what he believed had happened, something that the former Tory MP Harvey Proctor has criticised as exploiting a death as political propaganda. It's not just him that's been critical of Farage on that point. No, it's been a pretty broad range of politicians and figures in policing who have warned that it's not responsible to take that kind of approach to a case like this.

6:11And Farage, if you look at his quotes, one part of what he does here is he says, one thing I wouldn't speculate about is the thing which he then goes on to speculate about which is a way of kind of having it both ways in the handling of a case this sensitive and you know contempt laws are there for a reason and the way that the police and politicians tend to think about these cases is that you should err on the side of caution to prevent the risk of derailing any possible prosecution but also because you may not have access to all of the facts and the facts on this case have certainly been evolving quickly.

6:46Yeah, yeah.

6:47Archie Bland:And ultimately, this is a 78-year-old woman who lost her life in the most tragic and appalling of circumstances. If what is being reported is true, the injuries that the police are reporting, she sustained. Anne Whittacombe, you know, I think we can call her a colourful character, was a female MP during the 1980s. In 1987, she was one of only 6 % of female MPs. She then sort of became her own type of celebrity. She appeared on programmes like Strictly, but she was a unique and eccentric character who has been met with a very, very tragic end, and we must not forget that. Yeah, and I think she's somebody who, because of her post-political life, ended up having much wider recognition and probably wider kind of sympathy and affection among the public than she might have done on the basis of her political career alone.

7:43And that will inevitably increase the kind of sense of shock at her death in this way. And whether or not it turns out to have been politically motivated, I think it's something that will alarm a lot of people.

7:54Archie Bland:Yeah. Specifically, it will alarm people in public life, people who work in politics, MPs. Of course, we had the death of Joe Cox in 2016. We had the murder of David Amos. There have been much discussion recently, Nigel Farah himself talking about the threats that he felt to his personal security. This will be worrying to people who work in politics and in public life. In this case, we don't yet know the motivation and we can't speak to that. But I think what you can point to is a couple of things that have happened in recent years. One is an increase in direct political violence and violence carried out for political ends across the spectrum, particularly at the extremes.

8:36But you also have an increase in a kind of an ideology free range of violence when you look at something like the Southport attack where the ideology is very hazy and it's not clear that there was a specific political ideology linked to this but it was also an offence designed to cause terror. That is a growing kind of feature of the mix of cases that are investigated by police and either way it's really alarming for anybody in public life and for politicians for sure.

9:04Archie Bland:Yeah well Archie thank Thank you so much. Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Archie Bland, The Guardian's Head of National News. You can keep up with all our reporting and live coverage of this story over at theguardian.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today, I'm focused to be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Angus Neal and Anila Vesper. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch.

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9:53Archie Bland:This is The Guardian

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