{"id":686664,"date":"2026-07-11T22:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686664\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T22:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:10:16","slug":"uk-police-release-suspect-held-over-murder-of-ann-widdecombe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686664\/","title":{"rendered":"UK police release suspect held over murder of Ann Widdecombe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A LIFE IN POLITICS<\/p>\n<p>Ms Widdecombe, a Conservative MP from 1987 to 2010, was known for her Christian faith and outspoken views.<\/p>\n<p>In 1995, as prisons minister, she was embroiled in a row after defending a policy of chaining pregnant prisoners to prevent them from escaping.<\/p>\n<p>A staunch supporter of Brexit, Ms Widdecombe left the Conservatives in 2019 to join the hard-right party of anti-immigration leader Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Farage on Friday called her death a &#8220;terrible reflection on modern Britain&#8221; in a video posted on social media.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I do fear that for anybody in public life, or especially the political space, things have become even more dangerous today,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A LIFE IN POLITICS Ms Widdecombe, a Conservative MP from 1987 to 2010, was known for her Christian&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,228860,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-686664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-news-and-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}