A lit incendiary device, posted through a letterbox in south London sometime in early 2024 — the kind of incident that might, in quieter times, attract a brief police report and little else. That device was addressed to Nigel Farage’s home, and the case was closed without arrest. It has now been reopened.
Counter Terrorism Policing South East confirmed this week that, as part of its ongoing murder investigation into the death of Ann Widdecombe, officers have revisited the earlier incident. The Metropolitan Police and Counter Terrorism Policing London had originally logged the matter as an attempted burglary, a characterisation that the Telegraph disputed when it reported the episode as a “lit incendiary device” being delivered through the Reform UK leader’s letterbox. No suspects were identified, and the case was shelved pending new lines of inquiry.
Those new lines have now arrived, though not in any circumstances anyone would have wished for. Ms Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister and Reform UK spokeswoman, died on 8 July after sustaining twenty-one hammer blows to the head at her home in Haytor on Dartmoor, Devon. Joshua Kerry, 28, was charged with her murder on 20 July. The violence of the attack, and the political prominence of the victim, immediately elevated the case into one of the most serious domestic incidents of recent years.
Vicki Evans, senior national co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, was measured but direct in her public statement. “As part of the ongoing investigation led by Counter Terrorism Policing South East into the murder of Ann Widdecombe,” she said, “officers have reopened an investigation into an incident reported to police last year.” She added that, given the significant public interest in the Widdecombe case, it was of critical importance to provide that update — an acknowledgment, in effect, that the earlier handling of the firebomb report now warranted scrutiny.
That scrutiny has already acquired a formal dimension. CTP London confirmed on Friday that it had made a mandatory conduct referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. The IOPC confirmed it had decided to independently investigate the conduct of a Counter Terrorism Policing London staff member, following an allegation that the individual had failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry. The referral was mandatory, meaning the police had no discretion to handle the matter internally.
The institutional question now hanging over the case is whether the original investigation was adequate. A lit device posted through the home of a senior opposition politician is not, by any reasonable standard, a matter to be filed under attempted burglary and left dormant. Whether the failure was one of individual judgment, procedural design, or resource pressure, the IOPC’s independent investigation will be expected to establish. For policymakers and the public alike, the answer matters considerably.
For Farage, who told the Telegraph that police had investigated but identified no suspects, the reopening of the probe arrives against a backdrop that has shifted dramatically. What was once an unresolved and largely unreported security incident is now formally connected — at least investigatively — to the murder of a colleague and friend. The human weight of that connection is not easily set aside.