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Good afternoon from William Cash, the Mace Editor-in-chief
A senseless killing
Searching for meaning in Ann Widdecombe’s shocking death
Following her murder in her house on Dartmoor, the BBC ran some library footage of Ann Widdecombe sitting at home reading the Catholic Herald. As a former editor of the magazine, I only knew her from her sharp and life-affirming columns and as a longstanding parliamentarian and Catholic convert who never wavered in her faith or her belief in British sovereignty.
But I didn’t know her personally as her association with the Herald was before my time. But then, last November, I got a call from a friend saying that Ann Widdecombe had agreed to travel to Shropshire from Devon to address a Christmas dinner. She would be “touring” the area for two days, combining sightseeing with political talks. Would I like to host a lunch for her at my house?
Catholic connection
Of course, I said “yes”, as we had plenty in common, not least the Catholic faith, although I didn’t share her fanaticism in regards to being anti-hunting.
So I invited a few guests and Ann came to lunch in early December. In person she was very different from the headmistress-like arch-Conservative matriarch figure that I expected from her TV appearances and debating clips in the Commons (I did not watch her on Strictly). She was warm, slightly shy, funny and, for a politician who had considerable popular appeal, was clearly a well-read intellectual. She was entirely at ease whether discussing the new Pope Leo, repealing the ECHR, Nigel Farage and – naturally – her unswerving views on immigration.
I later looked up her education which gave some clues as to her intellectual confidence. She attended the Royal Naval School in Singapore and La Sainte Union Convent School in Bath, before reading Latin at the University of Birmingham. She later studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Country strife
It seems almost impossible to imagine that this kind, warm-hearted, conviction politician of the convent old-school was killed in her own home in the idyllic Dartmoor hamlet of Haytor Vale. The Devon and Cornwall Police reported serious head injuries. The episode seemed straight out of Midsomer Murders with no clear motive being established at first and the police stressing that there was no indication of a political motive, which is the progressive equivalent of saying “no foul play”.
But even when reports – discovered by journalists, not police – emerged (backed by CCTV footage) that a 28-year-old man from Rotherham had driven nearly 300 miles to Widdecombe’s house with a large stick or bar in his car, police seemed unwilling to admit that her killing could have had a political motive. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, who had visited her home to lay flowers, quickly said it looked as if the murder was “premeditated”, although he didn’t expressly say it was because of being an outspoken Reform spokesperson. He was vilified in some quarters for remarks that turned out to be prescient.
The police’s initial refusal to acknowledge that her death was an act of political terror is both shaming and embarrassing. As I wrote in The Mace soon after Widdecombe’s badly battered 78-year-old body, covered in blood, was discovered by her carer: “that Ann was Reform’s immigration spokesman cannot simply be swotted away.”
Double standards
The strangely guilty way that the media, and politicians from all parties, have reacted to Widdecombe’s shocking and brutal death – going from some polite but half-interested tributes when people first thought she had died of natural causes, to her being heralded across the political spectrum as a national saint at Keir Starmer’s last PMQs – shows the double standards that can operate when a politician of the right, or left, is murdered in a targeted attack.
It’s worth noting that out of the three British politicians who have been murdered in recent years, two have been Catholic. Both Widdecombe and Sir David Amess were conviction politicians when it came to matters of faith. Widdecombe was extremely close to Amess, murdered in 2021 by an Islamist fanatic. She was also godmother to one of his five children and was chosen by the family to read a tribute at his Westminster Cathedral memorial service.
Douglas Murray has written a scathing piece on this subject in his Spectator column this week whose headline hits the mark: “The hijacking of Ann Widdecombe’s death.” He notes that “there is the rule that a death must not be ‘politicised’ if it occurs on the political right”. In the case of Labour MP Jo Cox, “I do not recall the Labour party, the Remain campaign or her closest friends in parliament avoiding the politicisation of her appalling murder. Indeed, there was a moment when everybody intending to vote Brexit was made to feel almost personally responsible for her death at the hands of a lone madman.”
Principled politician
There is another reason, not written about, that also partly explains the way Ann’s tragic death has become such a political melodrama, with all sides collectively championing her as the very model of a principled politician, somebody who died perhaps as a political martyr, battered to death for her convictions.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was quick to say that Ann’s death was “not an Agatha Christie” mystery. Well, yes, the police seem to have their suspect behind bars so it is not a regular whodunnit. But Widdecombe’s murder is very much a “Whydunnit”.
A week on, although a 28-year-old white male suspect has been arrested on a terrorism charge, we still don’t know what the reasons are. There have been leaks that the suspect may have wanted to kill Widdecombe for her right-wing views, or those on homosexuality. Counter-terrorist officers are also examining whether extreme hostility to the Reform UK party played a role as well as considering whether “leftwing, anarchist and single-issue terrorism played a role in the suspect’s alleged motivation”, according to the Guardian.
Midsomer madness
Amid the rumours and speculation, one reason Widdecombe’s death has been so shocking is that it took place at midday in a sleepy Devon village that detective-mystery scriptwriters would call a “closed community”. That’s why Morse’s mysteries take place around the university town of Oxford and Miss Marple or Poirot are usually called in when the natural order of an English village, or college, is suddenly violated when a member of the community is found bludgeoned to death by a candlestick in the vicarage.
Haytor Vale – population 200 – is exactly the sort of cosy village where an Agatha Christie murder would take place, where people feel so safe they leave their doors unlocked. Indeed, asked in 2013 if she was afraid of being attacked because she could easily be found, Widdecombe said: “I am never scared, or lonely. I’m content.”
Part of the nation’s shock is because we cannot believe, or understand, why a man would drive all the way from Rotherham, in South Yorkshire, to carry out this murder at Widdecombe’s Rest, the name she gave to her bungalow. We not only want the suspect charged and put behind bars for life but, most of all, we want to know his motivations. We need an explanation.
Fatal formula
It’s fair to say that WH Auden would have been fascinated by the media response to Widdecombe’s killing. In his 1948 essay The Guilty Vicarage, the poet and detective-fiction lover set out why he was addicted to reading murder mysteries, which were essentially about “the dialectic of innocence and guilt.” The genre has a formula. It starts with the “peaceful state before the murder”, followed by the killing, leading to denials and “false clues” (such as in the first arrest of a 26-year-old tradesman from Newton Abbot, later discharged); then a motive is revealed, the murderer arrested and the peaceful village state is returned and justice restored.
But these rules only apply when the killer comes from within the community. When a seemingly random murder is committed by an outsider – as in the American crime fiction of, say, Raymond Chandler – there is no sense of natural order being restored. Which is why the murder of somebody like Widdecombe, or David Amess, who had such clear views on good and evil is so shocking. If we never know what the killer’s motivation was, society feels cheated and wronged, which is why it was so disturbing and infuriating that the Devon and Cornwall Police repeatedly seemed to rule out any political motivation.
Widdecombe was born in 1948, the very year Auden penned his essay on why he found murder mysteries so therapeutic. Whether such a sense of catharsis – or sense of resolve –will be felt by society today, some 78 years later, if the killer’s true political motives are ever revealed in court remains to be seen. Somehow, I doubt it.
Read our obituary of Ann Widdecombe: https://macemagazine.com/anne-widdecombe-devon-hamlet-murder-mystery-continues-as-british-suspect-is-released/
Whitehall vs Westminster: the gloves are off
Sir Olly Robbins, the former head of the Foreign Office, is taking legal action against the government, putting the treatment of senior civil servants under fresh scrutiny.
But there’s a twist. Sir Olly is also being tipped for a senior security role – such as national security adviser – in the incoming government led by Andy Burnham.
Sir Olly, who previously served as the UK's chief Brexit negotiator and deputy national security adviser, has held early-stage discussions with Burnham's team about a senior security appointment.
He was summarily dismissed as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in April by Sir Keir Starmer. This followed a scandal in which the FCDO approved Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to Washington despite concerns raised by UK Security Vetting.
Sir Olly is currently challenging his dismissal, seeking a judicial review on the grounds that he was given irrational reasons for being fired and that the process lacked fairness
Holding No 10 to account
In her piece this week, our Westminster insider Lucy Carrier-Pilkington explains the extent to which this legal action highlights how trust has broken down between Whitehall and government. Sir Olly’s move demonstrates to Downing Street, and to Westminster more broadly, how Whitehall is willing to hold political leaders to account.
In a statement, Robbins said: “I bring this action reluctantly. It would have been unnecessary if the prime minister had simply apologised for his mistake and made amends for the distress and cost it has caused me and my family. Instead, I now have to ask the courts to determine that the prime minister’s decisions were unlawful, unreasonable and to quash them.”
This move has come three months after Sir Olly’s dismissal following the Guardian’s revelation that he had overturned a recommendation from UK Security Vetting to deny clearance for Mandelson as ambassador to the US. The sacking was heavily criticised by Whitehall, which holds the position that Sir Olly was fired for doing what No 10 had wanted – namely, ensuring the swift passage of Mandelson through vetting and his establishment as ambassador.
For he’s an Olly good fellow
Senior civil servants believe the blame should be on Starmer for appointing Mandelson in the first place. But with Starmer now having bowed out of parliament, drawing stumps on his “political journey” with his last PMQs on Wednesday, it seems that Sir Olly will have a good case. The last thing Burnham will want – not least if he is in job discussions with Sir Olly – is to revisit the murky background about why this top civil servant was forced to stand down.
Sir Olly’s submission to the high court argues that Starmer had no statutory authority to dismiss him as head of the diplomatic service, that the reasons given were “irrational”, and that there was “no fair procedure” and ”no process at all” for the dismissal. When it comes to large pay-offs from the government, this sounds all too familiar.
Read Lucy’s piece: https://macemagazine.com/olly-robbins-shows-whitehall-is-prepared-to-hold-westminster-to-account/
Keep Khan and carry on
‘The Strategist’ this week is former Treasury special comms adviser Sonia Khan, who also successfully sued (and won) for wrongful dismissal after her very public sacking by Dominic Cummings in 2019.
How did she react? “My initial emotion was shock because everything just happened so quickly that you’re almost struggling to process it, and then I thought I just had to pull myself together. I quickly focused on how to ensure financial stability, not just for me but for my family.”
Cummings and goings
At the time, her husband Dan Horricks, a parliamentary researcher, had been suffering from a rare form of cancer so the sacking could not have come at a worse time. (Her husband has faced cancer five times over the past 15 years, including brain and spinal cancer.).
Khan brought an employment tribunal claim against the Treasury alleging unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. Her legal team argued that she had been dismissed without any proper process being followed. In November 2020, the case was settled out of court for a reported five-figure sum.
Khan then transitioned into the private sector, joining Cicero/Amo – now H/Advisors – in May 2020 as a director, quickly adapting her political skills to the corporate advisory sector and becoming a commentator on several shows including BBC’s Newsnight. She also oversees work on political risk tracking and political adviser mapping. Her clients have included Accenture, Barclays UK, BlackRock, Unum and the Oversight Board.
Party planning
With the two-party system seemingly bust, how does her agency decide which – of five or six – party conferences to attend? “Yes, it’s much more complex, but I would say it’s far more interesting. It has kept us on our toes as public affairs professionals because we have to adapt to every single party, and we can’t assume that the structures of the main political parties are the ways that smaller parties operate.”
This year, H/Advisors will be sending teams to all major conferences, including Reform where they have booked a space. Although, alas, she won’t be at the Conservative conference in Birmingham – close to her home turf – due to being on maternity leave.
Her tip for effective conference lobbying and engaging with prospective clients: “It’s a brilliant opportunity to invest in and nurture relationships, which is critical to what we do. I prefer smaller drinks receptions, where you can have proper one-to-one conversations and really get to know people”.
Bigger picture
A key to successful lobbying, she says, is seeing the bigger picture beyond the short-term. “Sometimes there are losses to be made for bigger gains,” she says.
Do former special advisers make good political consultants or lobbyists? Is the constant revolving between government and agencies a good thing for the industry?
“Those of us who’ve spent a good amount of time in government understand how government operates. We understand the interplay between different departments. We understand how decision-making works, and we’ve been lobbied, so we know what good and bad lobbying looks like.”
Khan and her team at H/Advisors’ work on the Rare Cancers campaign won Best Proactive Lobbying Campaign for an Issue or Cause at the 2026 InComms Corporate Affairs Awards and was also a finalist for Excellence in Pro Bono Working at the Communiqué Awards.
Khan’s own industry recognition began before the Rare Cancers campaign, when she was named PRCA Public Affairs Woman of the Year in 2025.
In February 2026, she received a second PRCA accolade when she was named Trailblazer of the Year. On top of all this, she is passionate about animal welfare and volunteers at the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. It’s difficult to imagine London’s abandoned pets having a stronger welfare advocate. Read the full interview below.
The Strategist: Sonia Khan
Senior partner, H/Advisors. “Those of us who’ve spent a good amount of time in government understand how government operates”. Read more >
The Advocate: John Howie MBE
Babcock International’s head of corporate affairs argues that in times of geo-political uncertainty, our sovereign defence capability is essential to keep Britain secure. Read more >
The Mace Questionnaire: Darren Jones MP, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister
With Andy Burnham moving into Downing Street, will Jones remain at the heart of government? In his Mace Questionnaire, Starmer’s highly rated “Mr Fixit” reveals the personal side to his political journey. Read more >
From the Archive: Crony Island
With James Purnell as chief of staff, Burnham’s new government is expected to include dozens of former political buddies. Adam Solomons looks back at why Westminster’s record for political cronyism is so murky. Read more >
Industry Watch: Andrew Hirst
Digital agency Topham Guerin names Andrew Hirst, former chief of staff to Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, as its first CEO. Read more >
Op-ed of the Week
To date, Reform is yet to appoint a foreign affairs spokesperson. Jonathan Singh looks at the party’s approach to international affairs. Read more >
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