According to TV funnyman Gyles Brandreth, the former MP Ann Widdecombe was “fun”, “feisty” and “formidable”. Said Brandreth on the BBC website: “She enjoyed a good roustabout and then it was over and you would go to the bar, have a drink and have a laugh about it.” So, that’s all right then. I have no idea how the word “roustabout” came into Brandreth’s thoughts given what it appears to mean, but hey ho. She may have been a politician who traded on hatred, bigotry and division, much of which revolved around her fanatical religious beliefs, but that’s just fine. Let’s go for a pint and have a laugh about it.
I have always found Widdecombe a seriously unpleasant person. As a minister, she called for female prisoners to remain chained-up when giving birth. She was strongly opposed to the principle of women being able to control their own reproductive systems and in 2019 speculated that one day science might “produce an answer” to homosexuality. I find it interesting that people who are anti-science when it comes to the absence of evidence for the existence of the various Gods they choose to worship, they then wonder if science would then come up with what can only be taken to mean a cure for homosexuality. I cannot set aside her poisonous to one side and conclude that she was “fun”. I see no fun in hate.
That said, I would not wish for Widdecombe to die in circumstances that appear to be so grotesque. And no matter how much I detested the woman and her views, a privately arranged death penalty was surely not the way to deal with her.
For someone who was so devout, one might think it strange that she carried around with her such unpleasant views. I’m afraid, I can’t go along with that. To be sure, the few religious people in my life are actually good people and tolerant of others, not least their sexuality. If you accept the religious view that the lord God made us all – and of course he didn’t, but that’s by the by – then He will also have created people who aren’t all card-carrying heterosexuals. If your religion steers you down the evidence-free route of creationism, then you have to accept that God knew what he was doing when he created everyone, including the LGBT community. Unless, of course, He is a completely incompetent God.
A more famous Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher I truly hated in the literal sense of the word. I felt, and still feel, that she was and remains the root cause of everything that is wrong in this country. Her legacy is every sink estate, the destruction of our entire manufacturing industry, the absence of affordable homes and, perhaps worst of all, the Me First attitude, there is no such thing as society. When Thatcher died, I celebrated with a bottle of bubbly. I hated her when she was alive, I hated her in death. Nothing changed. I am not wasting good Champagne for Ann Widdecombe, but her death does not mean I am suddenly warming to her as a human being because that is not how I feel.
It’s odd, isn’t it, that I condemn those who hate and yet here I am expressing my hatred for people. But that’s because they were all about hatred, it was their shtick, it was the basis of their beliefs. The God of the old testament, who didn’t exist, but nevertheless was a terrible person who did terrible things. I guess if you believe in Him, some of that hate is going to stick.
Because I believe in free speech, perhaps more than right-wing politicians like Widdecombe ever did, I accept that she had the right to say terrible things and she had the right to hate and didn’t deserve to die because of that.
I certainly won’t mourn her death, though, however much she was fun, feisty and formidable. Her politics in general made the lives of millions of people much worse, being as she was on the right of the Tory party and, later on, a disciple of the far right populist Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage. If you’re a fascist, or anywhere near being one, you can’t be my friend. And I can’t feel anything good towards you, either.
