Is Ann Widdecombe's Killing Being Weaponised?

The very sad and really horrifying death of Ann Widdicombe has raised really serious questions, not just about the safety of politicians, but also about her party, Reform UK.This week, Nigel Farage was hoping that we'd all stop talking about his various funding scandals and start talking about his so -called Me Against the Establishment by -election in Clacton.Instead, frankly, the whole country is talking more about a suspected terror -related attack.

murder of his former colleague.

Reform would have you believe there should be no limits on our speculation about this terrible crime.I, on the other hand, am very certain that there are good reasons to listen to the police and heed their advice, to be very cautious on how we discuss the events of this week, as Rory and I will be careful to do in this week's episode.So Rory, I think there's a lot to separate here.There's the by -election, caused by Farage's hissy fit when he wasn't enjoying scrutiny over his finances and now trying to frame everything against him and the establishment.There's the comedy value of Count Binface who's making headlines right around the world at the moment.And of course, because he was a reform politician, Ann Widdicombe's murder is in some cases being lumped in as part of one big story about reform.

So it is hard to separate, but I think we should try to stay focused on the by -election for now.what we think about that, why he's doing it, whether actually Count Binface has any chance of winning, and then I'll also do some of the politics around it and then maybe go into Ann Widdicombe a bit later.

Well, I think that the thing that struck me most coming back and getting into the reading around this is how fundamental in the end the money was to the collapse of Farage and the triggering of this by -election.Looking into the story of George Cottrell, posh George, becomes more and more mesmerizing.And I think we should pay tribute to some of the journalists who've been covering this story over the last few years.I mean, there's beenextraordinary articles such as The Spectator, Sunday Times Insight team with Gabrielle Pogrund, there was a great series of Guardian articles about this.But what's interesting when you read back over these stories, which have been coming for years and years and years, is how difficult it was for any of this stuff to break through, given how mad the story is.

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What I hadn't quite taken on board is this guy, George Koshrel, had grown up on the island of Mustique, been to more than school, doesn't go to university, and drifts into Nigel Farage's orbit when he's barely 20, 21.He takes Farage to the States on his great visit to meet Trump, and he's with Farage when he's detained at the airport.by IRS agents who bring 20 charges against him and eventually put him in jail.He does a plea bargain where he agrees to explain how he does his stuff.And in return, he only gets eight months in a federal penitentiary.This guy, you

have thought, that's it, right?And the posh George is not going to reappear then in the life of Nigel Farage.He then goes on to become this amazing sort of, well, it's like something out of London Falling.You remember that book London Falling you enjoyed?A young man who is living the most extraordinary fantasy life.who's claiming he's inherited 200 million pounds of trust fund, which his mother says is total nonsense and he's actually inherited nothing from them, who's telling Tatler magazine that he's just lost 56 million pounds at a poker table, 23 million pounds at another poker, so he's clearly very, very into gambling, and somehow rebuilds off the back of gambling through some very strange relations with Tether, which has Chris Harbourn set up, a whole life in Montenegro.

which involves private jets and planes.And then you see Farage is reappearing.He's turning up in Montenegro.He's becoming part of this life.And in the end, as these rather brilliant journalists have established, you end up with these incredible transactions, including one of which I still haven't seen properly reported, which is that Nick Candy, the treasurer of reform, gives an eight million pound house in downtown London to George Cotterill, for which George Cotterill doesn't pay.You can see in the land registry it's 0 -0.

Later he claims that Cotterill has bought shares in an offshore company in Guernsey, but they refused to divulge the amounts.Meanwhile, the security, the social media team that's built Farage, the transport, all of this stuff appears to be coming from cultural.And that, for my mother, for example, is the thing that's really stuck, not Farage Mother Dona Media.She's had it because of the money.She can't believe the money stuff.

The thing that I think is taking this, sometimes in these situations, you need a tipping point.So with Boris Johnson, who you and I knew as being a complete charlatan but people liked him it's always funny and what have you and there was all sorts of things that you and I and lots of people like us would have said this guy's not fit to be prime ministerHe should be gone by now.I would say his management of COVID, even before Partygate.The tipping point was his defense of Pinscher.the guy who was accused of sex offenses.

With Farage, I think the sense of the tipping point, maybe we're not fully at the tipping point, but the beginning of the tipping point is him defending himself over something that is utterly indefensible.Because you mentioned Christopher Harbaugh.Christopher Harbaugh has given five million pounds to Nigel Farage and if Nigel Farage expects us to believe that it's just an a gift.It's no strings attached, doesn't want anything from it.Then we hear that it's for security and we'll talk about security when we get on to Van Widdicombe.But as I've said recently, I think that was unbelievable, not believable.

Then it was because he campaigned for Brexit.But the more you read about Cottrell and about Tether, which is becoming, you talk sometimes about these trillion -dollar companies with AI, they're going to have 10 employees.It is a massively wealthy, not really putting much back, I would argue, So you then start to think and then you think, well George Cottrell, I think he will be regretting whatever the motivation or whatever the book, because I've not read the book.writing a book called How to Launder Money because this feels like a group of people using very opaque systems and national borders and technological advance to do things that most decent people would think you shouldn't be doing that when you're a politician.

Just on that How to Launder Money because I've slightly got into that so that the reason of course he's written the book is that he was sent to jail in the United States for laundering money.

Well, for wire fraud.It was for wire fraud.

Yeah.Part of the plea bargain was that he would explain to the federal agents how he had laundered money.And therefore, the book conceit is, I was a former criminal, and now I'm going to explain to the world how I did it so that law enforcement agencies can get on it.But what's so odd about it is that what he's gone on to do since his convictionseems to be to create sock puppets.So a lot of the business seems to be about buying up gambling accounts of ordinary people, so that professional gambling syndicates with enormous computes and money can bet on ordinary people's accounts, which they wouldn't normally be allowed to do.

So a huge amount of what he's doing is trying to get around the terms and conditions of UK gambling companies, or enabling people to place bets they wouldn't normally be allowed to do.And this is what this whole Montenegrin universe seems to be about, and some of the crypto.So in other words, it may not be exactly the type of stuff that he did when he literally sat down with federal agents who he believed to be drug dealers and agreed to launder a million of their money.But it's certainly a world which you would have thought any politician who wasn't greedy, and this is the other thing.I mean, Farage comes across as unbelievably greedy.Why did he take 50 ,000 to go to Davos when we were in Davos?

That whole trip cost 50 ,000, paid for by somebody else, not declared.If he's already received five million pounds from Chris Harbourn, and he's already getting all his security covered by Cotterill, and there's already free accommodation in London.I mean, Is there any limit to how much money Farage wants?

Well, there's two points that you made.There's that one, I'll come back to that.You made the point earlier, why does Farage keep somebody who's not just, you know, controversial and colourful, but has actually been to an American jail for committing quite serious financial offences?I think there can only be two reasons.And bear in mind, they are genuinely close, otherwise it would be very, very, well, it's weird anyway that George Cockrell calls him daddy.So there's that, there's the personal relationship.

He's clearly, Farage sees him as somebody who is very, very useful to him.So he's kept him for that reason.But I think the main reason is thatFarage actually, and this is where I'm critical of our media, Farage actually has been able to get away for too long with things that are a bit like Trump that most politicians wouldn't get away with.And that's because he's very cleverly and very successfully created this shtick as a kind of cheeky, chappy commentator as opposed to somebody who even dreams one day of being Prime Minister.So the drawing towards the tipping point has come from the fact that people have started to think, I wonder if he could be prime minister.

You know, Labour aren't doing very well in the polls.They've been ahead in the polls for so long.They've now got loads of money coming in.And of course, when it was starting, they were, do you remember, he actually did an advert, reformed the only party in Britain that welcomes cryptocurrencies.In a way, they've been hiding in plain sight and all this stuff.Then the other thing that happens, if you think you can get away with stuff for long, Once the scrutiny does start to become a bit more difficult to handle, and then he did this thing, he went on a reform podcast because of course, a bit like Trump again, they've got their own media infrastructure.

They've got papers like the Express and the Telegraph will just pump out, although they're all turning a bit, but they'll pump out his stuff, you know, whatever he says.They've got their own podcast.He goes on one of reform's sort of favorite podcasts, and he says, quotes, I'm being treated like a war criminal.Well, I know what it's like to be occasionally treated like a war criminal and called one every day of my life.He's being treated, at last, with some scrutiny.And the scrutiny is showing up very, very quickly.

One, that he's not very good at standing up to it.Two, that he regularly does things which anybody with serious intent upon being Prime Minister would never ever do.Five million pounds is one of them.Some of the others advertising gold bullion.Even the stuff like doing the cameos for Peanuts.What does that say if it's not greed?

Why does he need a hundred quid?to say up the rah to somebody?Why does he need a hundred quid to wish somebody well on their birthday?If you like somebody, you want to wish them well, you do it for nothing.If you're a nice person, lots of money.

Presumably, if I'm Chris Harbourn seeing all this, I'm like, what the actual fuck?I gave you five million pounds so that you weren't going to have to worry about any of this.Plus ten or more to the party.I've given ten to the party and I've given five to you.And why did I give it to you, Nigel?I gave it to you so that you could focus on becoming Prime Minister.

You wouldn't need to get up to any of your dirty financial dealings.You wouldn't have to do embarrassing little endorsements on videos anymore.You wouldn't have to take strange loans from people running gambling syndicates out of Montenegro.You can just get on with stuff because I've given you five million pounds, and that should be enough for you to live on comfortably with your MP salary.And he hasn't done it.I mean, if I'm Hubble, I'm just thinking, this is insane.

I mean, the only possible justification of writing a blank check is to save Farage from all this monkey business.And Farage just kept getting deeper in it.Right.

And he gets deeper in it.And then, how is he trying to frame this by -election that he has triggered.It's me against the establishment, right?As if one, he's not the establishment.Richard Tice who talks about a very successful aristocratic family, I think he we can put down as the establishment.Zia Yusuf, very much the establishment.

I mean the whole thing is utterly absurd but this is what he's trying to do is to frame now anything the police do as they investigate reform and the Cottrell family that they're doing, as they investigate Jenrick and some of his funding, they are now trying to put in the public mind the idea that the police cannot be trusted.We'll come back to that when we get to the way that they've reacted to the Ann Widdicombe murder, which I have real, real concerns about the way that they've reacted to this.So I think what'syou're seeing now with Clacton, I mean, look, you Rory, I think you thought it was wishful thinking.When I said at the turn of the year, I wouldn't be surprised if Farage is not leader of the Reform Party by the end of the year.I think he's peaked and I think he's on the way down.

He's still got a Trumpian appeal.I was talking to Steve Rotherham this morning, the Liverpool Mayor, friend of Andy Burnham.We were talking about reform and he said, look, you know, they're definitely, I think they're peaked, but I think they're But he's kind of in that space that Trump thought he was.I could shoot somebody in Fifth Avenue and my supporters are still going to love me. I just don't think, this is my hope, Britain is not America.Britain in the end, I think has enough basic core decency to say, you know what?I'm not sure a politician should take five million pounds off anybody.

I don't think they should take 50 ,000 pounds off anybody.

I also think that Trump's brand in the end was different.I mean, Trump, from the very beginning, faxed it in, was this sense of this rickety, debt -ridden, multiple bankrupt billionaire with loose money flowing in and out in every direction.That wasn't actually Farage's brand.Farage's brand was supposed to be the bloke in the pub with the pint.And Trump has more control of more media than Farage does.He is in a much more powerful position as an incumbent.

I mean, I think what we've seen with Farage and what I think we saw with Graham Plattner, the insurgent in Maine who was supposed to be taking on Susan Collins and who's also collapsed, is that it's very, very difficult actually for anybody really to do the full shameless Trump unless you've baked in that whole Trump story over 40 years.

Well, maybe we should turn to Ann Widdicombe and perhaps do this in two parts.First of all, just talk about what happened, what's happened and maybe talk a little bit about her career but then to what I see as this sort of attempt to politicize it in a way that is deeply unhelpful to the police and also I think is just again playing wrong.

Let me just do a quick quick quick explainer on Anne Woodacombe and you and Sean you havebetter than I did.But I was just reviewing her life and it's rather extraordinary.So she wasn't that old actually in comparative terms, born in the late 40s, came into conservative politics in the 70s in what would have been a pretty classic Tory route.So she'd studied PPE at Oxford, having studied Latin before.She then became an assistant to Michael Ancrum, who was then a Tory MP.

She became a local councillor.She then went through the tried and tested route of running in no -hope seats in 79, 83, finally gets into the House of Parliament, the late Thatcher era, and then becomes quite quickly a star, really, in a way, in the terms.Within a couple of years, she's a junior minister.Relatively quickly, she's a minister of state.She ends up, and one of the things I've always resonated with, she became, she had my job, she was a minister of state for prisons.In the last two years, the major government spent, and she did this thing which David Hanson did, which is to attempt to visit every prison in the United Kingdom, and she managed it.

It's a hell of an achievement, actually.You have to, I mean, because there's some pretty remote things and you've got the whips and all this going, you're going around well over 100 prisons, right?And she did that.And after the loss in 97, she was in a pretty powerful position.She'd become the shadow Home Secretary under William Hague.So she was quite a kind of cornerstone of the Tory party.

She was already beginning to develop pretty independent views.So she, on the one hand, was much more Catholic.So she was very anti -abortion.She was somebody who never talked about her own personal life.Shared a house with her mother till her mother died at 97 in the late 2000s, doesn't seem to have had romantic relationships, but as well as being very, very conservative on social issues, she also agreed with you on things.She was very anti -fox hunting.

for example, which would have been unusual for a Tory MP at the time.She fell out with Michael Howard.She was the one who produced this great line.He had something of the night about him.When David Cameron becomes leader, he's very much, from her point of view, a young whippersnapper who's hardly been in the House of Commons and hasn't been to any of the stuff she has.And she's a little bit derogatory about him.

And then after, she decides to step down, but she leaves Parliament pretty young.So she's only barely 60 when she steps down, when she could have had a just as the conservatives are coming into power for 13 years.So instead of what she would have expected, which is to be at the absolute summit of her career, being a minister in various conservative governments over 13 years, she goes off and becomes really one of the first politician celebrities.of every different sort.She has agony aunt columns in the Guardian.She has a BBC and ITV programs where she's being an agony aunt.

She's going out to being an MP, challenging vandals.She's going on Celebrity Big Brother.She's going on Strictly Come Dancing.One of the first real MPs to do all this kind of stuff.And then she becomes increasingly pro -Brexit, increasingly close to reform, and becomes, from the point of view as a sort of Cameroon wing of the Conservative Party, no longer fully one of them.But anyway, give us the sense.

Did you know her well?Did you appear on any of these shows with her?

Well, I said I would never do the reality TV shows, as you know, Rory, but I did regularly sort of joust with her on television, but also in private as well.I'm trying to remember what role she had in the 97 election.She was certainly one of their big hitters.And as you say, she had a succession of serious jobs.And that something of the night about Michael Howard, that showed you her ability to really cut through in a way.That phrase, I'm afraid when Michael Howard dies, that's going to be part of his...

because it really damaged him.Look, her and my politics were a long, long, long way apart, but she was one of those people you could really have interesting discussions about.You're right, when she was prison's minister, She was obsessed with this idea you have to go and see every prison inside.You have to get a real feel for it.She also was really interested in homelessness.I don't know whether that was something that was always with her or whether that was something that she got through seeing the link between prison and homelessness.

So there were lots of things that she was passionate about that I would have been passionate about as well.And I think you're right about the judgment of Cameron.I think she felt she was more of a real Tory than him, even though he had the Eton background and all the rest of it.I think what made her cut through in the way that she did was because at a time when maybe politics was becoming much more about conventional looking sounding politicians, she was just very, very, she was different.There was nobody else looked like her, sounded like her.And I'll tell you the other thing, my son, my Rory was on the day that I left government in 2003, so it's 22 years ago now.

And we had dozens of cameras outside the house all day.I'm sorry, Nigel, it's happened to a lot of people before you.And they're all out there waiting for Fionnuala to come back.The boys are downstairs watching the television all day where it's wall -to -wall on Sky and News 24 and all that stuff.So I came back in, came through the crowd of cameras and then sat down, had a cup of tea and talking to the kids.

I said to Roy, did anybody say anything particularly interesting?

He goes, no, not really.They all said what you expect.He said this, he said that.The only one that was really interesting was Ann Widdicombe.I said, oh, what did she say?She said, well, she thought that my impact upon political life was not wholly positive.

She thought that my conduct during the war was not asshe would have liked it to be.She felt I was far too tribal in politics, but she said, his biggest service to life and the nation was to show that you could do a very difficult job with a mental health condition.And she's the only one who said that.And so, and I think that actually sort of, I don't know what, whenever I bumped into her thereafter, Because I don't know whether there was anything in her life that made her particularly interested in mental health, but I know that she was.Again, it might've been through the prison's experience.

So I think it was, I was genuinely shocked when I heard that she was dead.and sad.But then, since then, and this whole murder thing, and it's like, it's just become one of those stories that is cut through to everybody.Every, you know, every go at the moment, people say, what is this Anne Whittacombe thing all about?

So you were in your retreat, wake up one morning, and on the news, Anne Whittacombe has died.

She's 78.So we think, oh, I didn't know she wasn't well.But that's sad.And then people start to pay tribute.And then through the day, it emerges that police have launched a murder investigation.And this is where I start to feel sorry for the police because straight away people are saying, is there a terrorist political motivation?

They say, we are not aware of a terrorist motivation.This becomes blanket police rule out.I've read the words very, very carefully.They didn't rule it out.So what's happened now, a few days later, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary announces in the House of Commons, this is now being handled by counter -terrorism.Q, lots of people on the reform Farage supporting side of things, basically, I told you, they're covering it up.

Sorry, for international listeners, though, just to explain what we mean by terrorism.We don't know exactly what they mean.But there's no reason to believe that by terrorism, what they mean is somejihadi Islamist group putting together a coordinated group in order to bring down the government.At the moment, the suspect appears to be a young white man who was arrested in Yorkshire, and the police have found material in his home.So the statement seems to be that he may have killed her because of her political beliefs, but it's not terrorism in the sense in which one talked about terrorism 20, 30 years ago.

which is people blowing things up, like the IRA.

And the definition, because there has been such an increased threat towards people in public life, it's about the use of terror and intimidation tactics to intimidate and terrorize people, prevent them from doing their work or, you know, and in this case, literally end somebody's life.So the police come out and they say it is not helpful to speculate.Nigel Farage, meanwhile, gets on, I think it was a helicopter, paid for, done a bio, flies down to Devon, where this murder has taken place, is advised that, no, we don't want you anywhere near, this is a murder scene.So stages this kind of walk with a wreath, lays a wreath in front in this field, and then does this great tribute to Ann Widdicombe.Now, okay, you could just about say that's justifiable.Then says, I think this was a premeditated murder, but I don't think it helps anybody to speculate.

So I'm going to speculate and then say it's not helpful to speculate.Zia Yusuf, with the police then saying, this speculation is really unhelpful.Zia Yusuf says, don't speculate, in quotes, means shut up and accept the establishment narrative.In other words, we don't believe you if you're the police.This is all so Trumpian.This is populism.

What it actually means, and we should put in the newsletter, a very interesting thread, I think I sent it to you, but you may still have been in the retreat, by a lawyer called Dennis Noel Kavanaugh.and he explains in this thing how he says he'sa lot of murder cases as a lawyer and how this sort of speculation can have a direct impact upon cases if and when they reach court and that defense lawyers are very skilled these days of looking for the kind of material that amid the speculation could help them get their guy off.

I would have thought presumably actually that the main reason that one's trying to control speculation is that it's politically explosive.I mean, with the Southport murders, with the killing that was was reported recently, I mean, we're in a politics in which large numbers of very, very angry men are mobilizing into the streets and families to mobilizing the streets of Britain and attacking the police.And in the end, she was a reform spokesman, and very close to Farage, and she's been murdered.So the real thing that everybody's bracing for in Britain is whether this is weaponized and politicized and turned into something that releases mobs onto the streets.And again, there will have been total sort of, I mean, and it's the other thing that's so sad at the moment.Every time anything happens, if there's a stabbing in Edinburgh, the politician is killed, everybody is sort of keeping their fingers crossed that it hasn't been a Muslim or an immigrant who's done it.

It's sort of almost a sigh of relief.Oh, that was done by a white person because then we're not likely to have huge demonstrations in Edinburgh against the starving.We're not going to have huge demonstrations against the King of Abu Dhabi.But exactly the same crime committed by an immigrant is now explosive in a way that a crime committed by a white person is not.

I still think this is going to be very explosive or potentially very explosive but I think the main reason the police have this no speculation, well I was funny enough not far from where this murder happened.Fiona and I were training as journalists in Devon on local newspapers in Devon.We were trained in there's a book which everybody had to read and sort of know inside out called essential law.for Journalists.And it seems to me a lot of that stuff is broken down.But just to give you one example of this guy, Dennis Kavanagh, that he made this point.

So there's something called the Criminal Evidence Act 1984.under which lawyers can submit in criminal proceedings that evidence should be excluded if it's thought to be unfair.And he then sets out an example, and I won't apply this to Ann Widdicombe because I don't know if this is relevant at all, but just let's imagine there's a crime that takes place, a serious crime, and there is CCTV in existence of a suspect arriving at the scene of the crime.Okay.Now, if that were the case now, you would have Zia Yusuf saying, why can't we see the CCTV?Okay.

Well, what if the police might say they are pursuing a case against a suspect, which relies upon an eyewitness account from a real person who saw them?Okay.A defense lawyer will get up and say, no, no, no, you were, you were influenced by the CCTV that you saw on the television, weren't you?Well, how do you know you weren't influenced by that?You say that that's the person that you saw, but can you remember what they were wearing?And so it goes on.

And the other thing he said, there are operational reasons why you might not want to release evidence.So for example, you mentioned the suspect that they're talking to now is up in Yorkshire.Let's just imagine that there was a group of them involved in this and that they're all in Yorkshire.and they did this together.Let's just imagine that.They hear that the police in Yorkshire have arrested this guy.

They think, shit, they're onto us.Flight risk, away they go.And then the other thing is that there are resource issues.The police these days, we saw it as you say in Southampton, in Belfast, they're having to deal all the time with rumorconspiracy theory driven by people who say, well, this is what happens if you don't tell us what's going on.There are good reasons sometimes why we are not told what's going on.

And to see use of saying, don't speculate is don't say anything against the establishment.I mean, these people, they're just, and this is why I think they're panicking by the way, because I think more and more, Fiona said this morning, more and more people are seeing them for what they are.The idea that they're for the establishment against the people, the idea that they believe in being tough on crime.If you're tough in crime, you support the police when there's a murder.Nothing else.Nothing else.

Yeah, I'm with you.

I think there may be, just on the, you know, where it is now, I think there are two big issues that we maybe need to talk about.One is security of MPs, but the other is this notion of the politicization of police investigations.I was very struck by something Penny Mordaunt said on the radio the other day.She was interviewed, I think it was on Times Radio, and she was talking about Farage and she said the death threats that Farage gets are not exceptional but exceptional to him.they apply to a lot of MPs.It does not mean he shouldn't be subject to scrutiny on donations.

She said just because we face threats does not excuse us from facing accountability for political donations that are made to us.And I do feel that what's happening at the moment is that reform, Generic was on the radio this morning, I mean, to be fair to Nick Robinson, he really, you know, put him through the wringer on it.But this seems to me him, Yusuf, lots of the social media influencers, they're trying to shift the narrative very firmly away from Farage is a bad guy who takes dodgy money to Farage is only accused of this because he's against the establishment and he's the victim in all this.

And then there's the censorship thing, isn't there?Which is that you can see in the States after Charlie Kirk's assassination, which is you can't go around criticizing us because if you go aroundcriticizing some mad person, it's going to take it hard and try to assassinate someone.And you've had people in the Israeli government making the same statement.You can't criticize the Israeli government because if you do, some crazy terrorist might use that as a reason to mount an anti -Semitic attack.It is absolutely necessary for us to be able to criticize people and hold them to account.

And I'm afraid it isn't fair to say that calling out people for their views, for their donations, for their conduct has to be suppressed for fear that some mad person might use that as a pretext to do something horrible.

I also think that, you know, I mean Nigel Farage is a very high profile political figure, no doubt about that.But it was Joe Cox who was murdered during the Brexit referendum.It was David Amos who was murdered.It was Stephen Timms who was attacked by a guy in his surgery.I don't hear Stephen Timms going around saying, I demand more and better protection than everybody else who's been in my circumstances.I see Stephen Timms and Kim Ledbetter, Joe's sister, who's now doing the same job.

I see them thinking, we have institutions, they assess threats, we have to trust them.And what's happening here, Generic was doing this this morning, it was basically saying, it now emerges that Nigel Farage was offered the same level of state protection as Kemi Badenot gets.Now Kemi Badenot, she's the leader of the opposition, it's an official government function, okay.And of course now that we've got so many former Prime Ministers, so many former Foreign Secretaries, so many former Home Secretaries, there's so many people at the moment who might think that they need protecting.And, you know, look, Fiona reminded me last night, I'd completely forgotten about this, but five years ago, I had to give evidence in a case where a former soldier was threatening me with quotes, putting a bullet in the back of your skull, and also threatening my family.Now, I certainly didn't publish that,

it, but I did take it to the police.There are so many incidents when I haven't gone to the police.We've had attacks on the house, which thankfully from the old days when I sort of vaguely mattered in public life, we have reinforced windows where we had bricks being thrown at the windows.We had huge graffiti war criminal graffiti at the top of the road.I've had my fair share of verbal physical altercations in public but the bullet in the skull threat and particularly the reference to my kids was one of the very very few times I went to the police.I think the police have got a lot on.

I also think it would be terrible for democracy if all MPs had to have protection.It would be incredibly expensive and I just don't think it benefits anyone to have public figures constantly demanding more and more security.I'm afraid you do sometimes have to trust other people to make judgments.

Alistair, I think we've got had so much news to cover, as you say, this week.And I think we may need to leave some of this stuff for question time.But can I just sort of finish with a little bit of a, yeah, I suppose a gentle tribute to Anne Whitacombe, who is a very, very, I think, when I think back to a very kind of distinctively British figure, a very wonderful kind of combination of old -fashioned conservatism, outrageous views, views that provoke people like you and me.She became a Roman Catholic because she was so appalled by the ordination of women in the Church of England, which, again, a very strange thing for somebody who in some ways was kind of a feminist role model.But who also, as you say, had a sort of, I think there was a wonderful authenticity.And I think I do wish, in a way, whatever we think of their views, we were more comfortable with politicians having unusual views.

the fact that, you know, again, I disagree with her about fox hunting when you agree with her.Just that sense of the oddness ofher deep compassion for certain issues, her willingness to live in housing estates, spend time in prisons, work on homelessness, take unpopular positions, and also do these things to engage with the public.So I thought she's a rather splendid splendid figure and in a real loss.

I don't know if you heard Thought for Today this morning on the Today program Rory, but we were honorably mentioned in Thought for Today because they were, the speaker, I didn't catch the name at the start of it, she was making the point that there is so much toxicity in our politics and we all need to disagree more agreeably as Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell say on the rest of his politics.So yeah, no I agree, she was without doubt a very, very, very big character.I mean it's horrible when anybody dies But the circumstances of this death are particularly gruesome.I'm also not sure that she would have welcomed the Charlie Kirk -ization around it.I don't know, but I just think we should.My message to Zia Yusuf and Jen Rick and the rest of them, shut up, let the police do their job, and they'll have a better chance of doing it if they don't have endless political commentary alongside it.

Okay Rory, so great to have you back and we've got question time tomorrow.We are going to talk lots about Andy Burnham, soon to be our Prime Minister.We're going to talk about Iran, ceasefire over.We're going to talk about the climate and the heat waves and all the craziness that's been going on on that front.We're going to talk about the campaigning for Count Binface.We're going to talk about your meditative retreat and whether it's made you any calmer than when you sat down with Gabrielle Zuckman See you then.

See you then.Bye -bye.