Kit Knightly – Off-Guardian July 16, 2026
Left, then right. Right, then left. That’s the way these days.
First, they pitch their solution to an imaginary or exaggerated problem from the left-wing perspective, then pitch the same problem-solution combo tweaked to appeal to the right. Or vice versa.
“Online hate speech” is the most obvious example of this in recent times.
It started with the left, who are now fully on board after months of fear porn about the online “far-right” spreading “misinformation” and “hate speech” about illegal immigration, peppered with staged riots and other “violence”.
Fully dosed up on mob-rule Kool-Aid, and safe in the knowledge that it was only the bad people on the other side who would ever be squished by the giant jackboot they were cheering on, the British left gleefully watched as the government made thousands of arrests for tweets and Facebook statuses and other similarly asinine things.
But now Ann Widdecombe has been murdered, and it’s time for the jackboot to switch to the other foot.
Within hours of the alleged murder, it was being reported the crime was “terrorism”:
BREAKING: Ann Widdecombe was the victim of a targeted attack, says Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of counter terrorism policing.
Our West of England correspondent Dan Whitehead has the latest.https://t.co/L7aBzUA66Z pic.twitter.com/KufD4cTXXJ
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 14, 2026
It’s easy to see where that goes: the perpetrator will inevitably have been “radicalised online” by “unregulated hate speech” or “violent content”. This is nothing new.
But it gets worse.
Earlier today, the Scottish Police announced the arrest of Heather Herbert, an Aberdeen University employee who had posted that Widdecombe’s murder was “good news” and they hoped it was “extremely painful”.
They’re calling it a “hate crime”, which is wrong. It’s hate, but it’s not a crime. Hating people isn’t, and shouldn’t be, illegal. Neither is saying distasteful or offensive things.
As you can imagine, all the pro-free speech right that turned Lucy Connolly into a sort-of Poundland Emmeline Pankhurst immediately rushed to defend Herbert’s right to speak her mind, right?
Wrong. Instead, people like Tommy friggin’ Robinson are suddenly concerned about violent rhetoric:
Make no bones about it, the left’s vile rhetoric had Ann Widdecombe murdered. https://t.co/Snv38YOWM0
— Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) July 15, 2026
We’ve seen this before. After the alleged shooting of Charlie Kirk in the US, pundits who had been previously ride-or-die free speech enthusiasts were suddenly waving the pitchforks for tasteless hot-takes and edgy jokes.
As I wrote at the time:
under the right circumstances, both teams now agree that free speech doesn’t mean the freedom to say things that are morally wrong or factually incorrect or…whatever. Which is actually the antithesis of free speech. Everyone believes in free speech they agree with.
Charlie Kirk; Or How the Right Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cancel Culture
And now the exact same thing is about to happen here.
Now would be a really good time for everybody – left and right – to have a collective awakening moment, and realise that empowering the state to arrest people for opinions and jokes is actually a REALLY bad idea, and we need to stop it now before it goes any further.
But I wouldn’t hold your breath.
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> the Scottish Police announced the arrest of Heather Herbert
You don’t say. Arrested by PC Donald Donally not doubt. Ably assisted by Terresa Terracotta and their dog Woof Woofery.
> Make no bones about it, the left’s vile rhetoric had Ann Widdecombe murdered.
Ah, good old tommy gun. AKA whatever. If only vile rhetoric could kill, we could take out all the shit.
> empowering the state to arrest people for opinions and jokes is actually a REALLY bad idea, and we need to stop it now before it goes any further
Yeah, let’s do that. That’ll stop the invasion and keep them from raping the children. Perhaps we could also make it so that we could actually (dis)empower them.
Viva la resolution. “I hereby resolve to never do anything (unless told to).”
“Widdecombe Murder Means Attacks on Free-Speech Swap Sides”… What it does do, is “legitimise” the faux right by giving it a new martyr. Widdecombe clearly had some use as a Tory defector, but she was clearly past her best. And what was her best anyway? IMO she was a clever woman who lived in the narcissistic bubble most MPs do; scarcely living in the real world that most people inhabit.
The fake right Reform benefits from her murder. Even now we might speculate as to whether the arrested suspect did it or was somehow groomed/allowed/guided to do it. I maintain TPTB want Reform to succeed but only up to a point. Reform will no doubt align with the policy supporting Israel by conflating immigration with Muslims and then conflating Muslims with Palestinians. And this way they ride on the coat tails of popular resentment of immigration without ever really being able to do anything, but it does fill their sails with popular sentiment…
WE MIGHT ALSO HIGHLIGHT THE FAUX LEFT.
As most will know, “Heather” Herbert was a sex-change university appointed apparatchik. The kind of work the fake left have always been able to get. What some might find interesting “her” use of the Freedom of Information portal “What Do They Know”. I found this myself because I have been using the very useful FOI portal myself over the last couple of days; when I put “Heather Herbert” in my search engine, it returned this entry because of the sites I was using:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/search/heather%20herbert/all
Among “her” requests, there questions about single sex toilets in the Palace of Westminster, and ironically, “Knife and Hate crime against transgender people in recent months…”
Yeah don’t worry about it, the commies can say whatever they want. Its only whites who speak against Jews & wogs that ZWOG persecutes.
“the alleged shooting of Charlie Kirk”
First time I’ve seen in print the possibility that the whole thing was faked. After Epstein’s fake death in jail and Trump’s fake assassination attempt in Butler, we should at least question Kirk’s. His widow’s tears on cue didn’t keep me from noticing that she seemed very happy to be the one in the spotlight at last. Apparently, she thought she could fully replace him. But a pretty face and exposed boobs are irrelevant when what we need is brains like his.