So now we have two-tier grieving. Progressives are allowed to mourn lost colleagues, but populists are not. How else to explain the media mauling of Nigel Farage merely for venting his sorrow over the death of Ann Widdecombe? He’s been branded a pantomime mourner, a death exploiter, a weeper of insincere tears. It’s been obscene, and frankly cruel.
When Farage lays a wreath and voices his fear of violence, he’s tarred as a death-supping opportunist
Even by the standards of the Farage Derangement Syndrome that’s been gathering pace these past few weeks, the attacks on him for lamenting the killing of a colleague have been mad. He’s “exploiting” her death for “political propaganda”, howls the leftish press. The Times rebuked him for turning tragedy into “propaganda” by speculating that her killing may have been politically motivated. But recent developments suggest he may have a point: counter-terrorism cops have taken over the investigation.
Even his laying of flowers at Widdecombe’s home elicited haughty scoffing from the grief police. X was awash with infantile snark about how he was only “doing it for the cameras”. It’s a “performance”, people sneered. Behold the brain rot of Faragephobia, where your mind is so fried by Nige hate you can’t even accept that he might genuinely be cut up over the violent death of a friend and ally.
Then came the accusations of deflection. He’s “weaponising” Widdecombe’s death to distract attention from his financial scandals, say his accusers. A writer for the i paper said the only reason Farage is noisily fretting over the security of Reform politicians is to justify that five million quid he received, supposedly to pay for security. Or maybe he’s genuinely worried for his Reform friends? After all, one was just savagely cut down. Honestly, the lack of heart is staggering.
What a bind Farage finds himself in. If he had stayed schtum and laid no flowers, he’d have been called a heartless narcissist. “Told you Reform was just the Cult of Nigel”, they’d have said. Yet when he lays a wreath and voices his fear of violence, he’s tarred as a death-supping opportunist. He’s damned if he mourns and damned if he doesn’t.
Then there’s the hypocrisy. The people ripping the mick out of Farage’s mourning are the same mawkish middle classes who love a public blub. The minute a celeb pops his clogs they’re all over social media professing their “devastation”. Collective ersatz grief has been the moral glue of the chattering classes pretty much since the death of Princess Diana, yet when a man mourns someone he actually knew they snort and roll their eyes.
And what about the public grieving for Jo Cox? It was absolutely right that people mourned that savage assault on a mum, an MP and on democracy itself. Now, though, some of the same media folk who cried for Cox are mocking Farage for crying for Widdecombe. That’s a little sick-making, if I’m going to be honest.
What’s more, some of us remember that Cox’s death was not only rightly lamented as a vile act of anti-British terrorism – it was also held up as an indictment of Brexit itself, which was right on the horizon at the time. Was that also the “weaponisation” of tragedy? Or is the use of death for political ends okay when decent, non-populist people do it? Do let us know the rules.
We seem to live under a hierarchy of sorrow. Under the doctrine of two-tier grief, if a politician of the right is slain the immediate instinct is to police the reaction of her surviving colleagues. Their grief is treated as a tactical calculation, their sorrow subjected to a moral audit. Yet when someone in closer proximity to progressive opinion is killed, grief is seen as natural, righteous, and the more publicly vented, the better. I’m old-fashioned. I think every theft of a precious life should be mourned, by all of us.
Centrists damn Reform as a wicked outfit that dehumanises its opponents. But that’s far truer of them and their one-eyed loathing for Farage and his “bin men”, as a Labour MP sneeringly referred to Reform politicians.
The Centrist Dad multiverse of pompous podcasts and Bluesky snidery has convinced a vast chunk of the middle class that populism is fascism and Farage is our Mussolini, and it is turning them loopy. Guys, stop, switch off: Ann Widdecombe’s death is sad, The End.
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