... Is not going to be discussed in this article, although it is a good example of what I actually want to explore: how expertly the media is able to manipulate people into focusing on exactly what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants.

For those blessed souls lucky enough to have no idea what the title of this article is referring to, forgive me for enlightening you: the wife of Andy Burnham, the new UK Prime Minister, wore a dress that some people thought didn't suit her very well, and there have been ferocious arguments about it all over social media ever since. The actress Sharon Stone has even chimed in.

Meanwhile, for the half of Twitter not sucked into this scandalous sartorial saga, they're being kept busy by this year's most gripping and unpredictable gory murder epic:

Who Killed Ann Widdecombe???!!!

(And please note, as a scribbled side note from my frustrated inner English teacher, that it is Ann without an E, and Widdecombe with one, NOT 'Widdicombe' as it keeps being erroneously written. Tsk, must try harder, see me after class, etc.)

The press has been busy keeping the audience fully engaged in the action by throwing out all sorts of clues and red herrings, such as releasing footage of the suspect taking his bins out.... but - plot twist! - that turns out to be AI.... and it doesn't look like the official photo of the suspect... which might be AI too.... and bears no resemblance to the artist's photo of the guy in the dock... OMG, is there a COVER UP going on??!

No, guys, there's not.

"Cover up" means concealed, hidden, suppressed, kept out of the public domain - not plastered all over the headlines every day and ensuring the country is talking about nothing else (except Andy Burnham's wife's dress).

The press intentionally puts out this nonsensical and contradictory information because it WANTS you fully sucked in, engaged in the action, analysing every new 'clue' and Easter Egg they throw you, just as you would with a televised crime drama... Because that's what this is.

A live-action televised crime whodunnit, where the audience is intentionally confused and misdirected by the scriptwriters in order to maintain the suspense and excitement. That's always the formula used in murder mysteries, and we're always conned by clever screenwriters into suspecting the wrong people at first, and falling for false evidence, because if it was clear from the start who did it and why, the series would be boring and no-one would tune in.

They want us all hooked on the Ann Widdecombe Murder Mystery Epic, that's why they're pulling all these press stunts to keep us fully involved - and they also want us to feel like we're part of a special club who can tell the media is lying...

The problem with this, however, is that everyone who emphatically believes the media is lying about who killed Ann Widdecombe, equally as emphatically believes the media is telling the truth about the fact she was killed.

This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. If the media would lie so outrageously about the culprit, their motives, and the circumstances surrounding the murder, why would anyone believe they're not simply lying about the whole thing? That there was no murder and the whole storyline is made up?

If we are completely objective and honest, that's the only explanation that really makes sense: that explains why the media appears to be repeatedly breaking the law regarding not prejudicing a suspect's chance of a fair trial, and why they're plastering intricate personal details about the accused all over the papers.

Although there is a caveat regarding publishing personal information on a suspect if the information is considered to be "in the public interest", nevertheless, under UK media law, the media cannot freely publish details about crime suspects solely based on their own assessment of the "public interest." Public interest doesn't literally mean "of interest to the public", but rather, that there is a legally compelling reason for the public to know certain details of crime suspects - for instance, if the suspect is still at large, and therefore could plausibly represent a threat to public safety. Beyond that, however, publication of personal details of crime suspects is tightly restricted by privacy laws, active legal proceedings, and specific statutory restrictions.

Therefore, there is no legal justification for the extraordinary level of detail released by the press to the public about the Ann Widdecombe murder suspect, Joshua Kerry. We already know his full name, what he looks like, where he lives, his family details, and his personal history and alleged political beliefs - details which are highly likely to create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to future legal proceedings, meaning the press coverage is in almost certainly breaching the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

How would 'Joshua Kerry' ever get a fair and unprejudiced trial, given the enormous amount of high-profile press coverage about him which already strongly implies his guilt?

He obviously wouldn't.

And that's a big tell the story is fabricated, along with the classic 'name games'....

As ever (see 'Henry 'Nowak'), they do like to have fun with the names in their ops - to 'josh' with them, so to speak - and so, in 'Joshua Kerry', we have the acronym JK, internet-speak for "just kidding"; we have the abbreviation of Joshua being 'josh', which literally means 'to joke', and then, if we take the first two letters of 'Joshua' and of 'Kerry', what do we have...

The multiple allusions to jesting in this man's name represents an extraordinary coincidence, given the name of another high-profile "assassinated politician" sounded just like 'Joke Ox'... (the ox being an ancient sacrificial symbol, so 'joke ox' can be read as 'joke sacrifice'.)

Just as they told us with Henry 'Nowak' - 'whack' being slang for murder, so, 'Henry Nowak' equals 'Henry No Murder' - they are telling us again with the joshing JK, JOshua KErry: it's a joke. A prank, a skit, not real. And while we continue to fall for it, they're having a jolly good laugh at our expense (and thanks to the Twitter sleuths who spotted some of the name giveaways).

Ann Widdecombe, the seasoned TV celebrity and pantomime dame, with credits including Celebrity Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing, and Louis Theroux, was not murdered. It's a show, just like the aforementioned productions are. 'Structured reality', as they're called, and the purpose of this particular performance is to manipulate the audience into being more sympathetic towards Reform, the political party Widdecombe was a spokesperson for, and whom she vigorously defended in her last TV interview, given just hours before her reported death.

The doomed, undemocratic Burnham premiership we've just been landed with has been installed in order to so outrage the public that a General Election is called, and in this election, the ruling classes require a Reform victory, for reasons I have explored before. So, a number of high-profile publicity stunts are being staged to push the electorate towards Reform, by depicting them as a genuine alternative, a real threat to the status quo: so abhorred and feared by the establishment that their key people actually get murdered!

We're not supposed to believe the "official story" of who killed Ann Widdecombe (that's why it's intentionally contradictory and full of holes) because we're supposed to think it was an establishment hit, because, we are to conclude, the establishment is so threatened by the political potency of the mighty Reform that they need to assassinate its prominent spokespeople.

That, you see, proves that Reform are the real deal, are genuinely anti-establishment, and you should vote for them.

That's the point. That's the message we're supposed to come away with.

We're also supposed to feel very special and clever that we've "spotted a cover up" and the media is "trying to throw people off the scent of who really did it".

Nope. If this was real and they wanted to do that, they wouldn't give any headline coverage to it at all, like they didn't when then Prime Minister Tony Blair's teenage daughter, Kathryn, tried to kill herself.

Remember that?

No, nobody does, because it wasn't reported in the press. It was actually 'covered up'.

That's how cover-ups work: details are suppressed, denied, hidden, and kept out of the press.

Compare that to the breathless, wall-to-wall coverage we have of the Widdecombe "murder".

There are zero legitimate reasons to keep the public actively informed via the press about an ongoing murder investigation when a suspect is already in custody and before they have been tried or convicted. It's irrelevant whether the alleged victim was famous, the law is the law and doesn't change for famous people.

The only way the press could be completely confident they would get away with this, be absolutely sure they're weren't breaching media law, or putting themselves at risk of heavy punitive fines, is if the "murder" is, in fact, fake. It's not prejudicing any trial or breaching any privacy laws if the whole thing is a scripted drama being performed by actors and AI.

We can apply the same formula to any high-profile "murder" or "terror attack". If the suspect has been apprehended and is thus of no further risk to the public, yet, prior to a trial or any conviction, the press gives us intricate details about them, including their family details, personal histories etc., there's a very good chance it's not real. And we do indeed see this exact pattern in virtually all the high-profile "murders" and "terror attacks".

Which is what informs my phrase, "if it's headline news, it's a ruse".

Sensationalist news headlines are manufactured and manipulated: Andy Burnham's wife wore 'that dress' on purpose to generate controversy. Amplified social media accounts, BBC alumni, and Hollywood royalty boosted the story. Now everyone's arguing about it. That's what the desired outcome was.

Equally, it's a comparable playbook with Ann Widdecombe. Headline news everywhere, amplified accounts encouraging scepticism of the official line, everyone's now Columbo. Exactly what the establishment wants.

Quite bizarrely, the "Ann Widdecombe was a terrible threat to the establishment" line seems to be gathering significant pace, despite the fact that Oxford PPE graduate Ann spent her entire career deeply embedded in the establishment, was a prominent Tory MP and TV celebrity, to the extent she became a household name and borderline "national treasure". Tributes have been paid to her by some of the biggest establishment names out there, including Nigel Farage, Jack Straw, Gyles Brandreth, Michael Howard, and multiple members of the government and mainstream media.

Is that how the establishment treats someone who is a threat to it? Gives them an illustrious career, makes them an MP for twenty-three years, and ensures they become household-name famous, whilst being a friend to some of the most well known names amongst the British cultural and political elite?

And to further punctuate this point, if Widdecombe was any sort of threat, why would the establishment wait until she was no longer an MP and 78 years old to murder her? What precise threat is she supposed to represent now that she didn't represent for the preceding forty years?

It's a farcical story. She wasn't a threat to the establishment, she was the establishment (that's why they made her so famous), and this "she was a threat to them" story is being manufactured to manipulate the masses into believing that both she and her party are the real deal: a threat to the status quo rather than an integral part of it.

"So what have they done with Ann then? Why would she go along with it?"

They've put her into something akin to witness protection where her identity and appearance are altered and she lives a new life. She would go along with it because, having been deeply embedded in the British establishment all her life, she knows how it operates and that nobody at her level of fame and success is an independent actor. There are hidden hands behind the scenes, responsible for her meteoric rise to household name, "national treasure" status, and she would have spent her whole career knowing that if they "called in a favour", she would be obliged to obey. That's how power and fame on the world stage work - if you want them (which she clearly did, and got them), you cut a deal.

We must also remember that she was nearly 80, so she wasn't going to have a long and illustrious further career ahead of her anyway. As such, she may well have been quite enthusiastic about the idea of "dying" in a sensationalist, high-profile murder mystery epic, rather than fading away into obscurity as the ravages of old age took hold, her eventual death at 93 getting a few paragraphs in the back pages, regarding someone who used, a long time ago, to be famous.

Who wants that to be their swan song?

A theatrical, larger-than-life pantomime star like Ann would surely rather her character bombastically burn out in a blaze of headline glory, than feebly fade away into irrelevance.

Ultimately, Ann Widdecombe has ensured that her legacy is branded into the public consciousness forever, and that she will be remembered as a martyr and a hero, an iconic political warrior who gave her life for the cause.

What better legacy could a star of stage and screen hope for? It even outshines Sharon Stone commenting on one's dress...

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