The man accused of murdering Ann Widdecombe had a “particular hostility to Reform”, prosecutors alleged on Friday.<\/p>\n
They said Joshua Kerry, 28, “had an extreme left wing and\/or anti-establishment mindset”.<\/p>\n
The prosecution also told the Old Bailey Widdecombe’s murder had a “terrorist connection” as it was “politically and ideologically motivated”.<\/p>\n
Last week, Kerry, who had already been charged with Widdecombe’s murder in July, was charged with a second offence of preparing terrorist acts.<\/p>\n
He is accused of “online reconnaissance” of prominent people and institutions, travelling to Nigel Farage’s home in South London on 19 April 2025, and trying to break into it 15 months before Widdecombe was killed.<\/p>\n
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb agreed to the prosecution request to join the two charges into one case. <\/p>\n
The prosecution argued they were “inextricably linked”.<\/p>\n
Kerry appeared in court by video link from Belmarsh prison wearing a prison-issue grey sweatshirt.<\/p>\n
The judge set a date for a five-week trial on 8 June next year.<\/p>\n
The next hearing will be on 29 January.<\/p>\n
Nicholas Lumley KC, defending, told the court that Kerry was likely to contest all the charges against him.<\/p>\n
Kerry was charged in July with the murder of 78-year-old Widdecombe, a former Conservative minister and Reform spokeswoman.<\/p>\n
Widdecombe was found dead on 9 July at her home in Haytor, Devon, having sustained serious injuries.<\/p>\n
The former Tory MP was hit on the head with a hammer 21 times at her home as she ate lunch, prosecutors said during a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July.<\/p>\n
She served as Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald in Kent for 23 years and was appointed to ministerial roles in Sir John Major’s government in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
She became a member of Reform in 2019.<\/p>\n
Following her departure from the Commons, Widdecombe appeared on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2010 and was a runner-up on Celebrity Big Brother eight years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man accused of murdering Ann Widdecombe had a “particular hostility to Reform”, prosecutors alleged on Friday. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-797211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797211","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=797211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}