Politics

Andrew Bridgen’s wife opens up on MP’s descent into anti-vax ‘cult’ in ‘horrific’ interview

Andrew Bridgen’s wife opens up on MP’s descent into anti-vax ‘cult’ in ‘horrific’ interview

Related video: Tory MP Andrew Bridgen has whip removed after comparing Covid vaccines to Holocaust

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Social media users have thrown their support behind the wife of former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, after she shared her experience of watching her husband become “captured” by the anti-vax movement.

Bridgen has consistently spoken out in the Commons about what he considers to be “experimental vaccines”, questioning the government in October 2022 about why “healthy children who are at minimal risk from Covid” were receiving the jab, arguing it was surely “in breach of the Hippocratic oath to ‘do no harm’”.

Just two months later, he used his opportunity to quiz Rishi Sunak during Prime Minister’s Questions to ask whether he would “overturn the big pharma-funded Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) recent recommendation that those experimental vaccines be administered to children as young as six months of age”.

A week after that, he led an adjournment debate on the “potential harms” of the coronavirus vaccine, calling for the “complete suspension of these emergency use authorisation vaccines” and accusing institutions of “wilful blindness”.

The MP – who is, himself, double-vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine - added: “It is when human beings … turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, reduce anxiety, avoid conflict and protect their prestige and reputations.

“There are numerous examples of that in recent history, such as the BBC and Jimmy Savile, the Department of Health and Mid Staffs, Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, and the medical establishment and the OxyContin scandal, which was portrayed in the mini-series Dopesick.”

An equally shocking comment – which ultimately resulted in him being suspended and expelled from the Conservative Party, leading to him sitting as an MP for Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party and then as an independent – came in January last year, when he tweeted that the Covid vaccine was “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust”.

Sunak said at the time that the remarks were “completely unacceptable”, while chief whip Simon Hart said Bridgen “crossed a line”, causing “great offence in the process”.

Just this week, Bridgen was reprimanded by Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, for asking for a debate on “crimes against humanity” and supporting the return of capital punishment.

Now, his wife Nevena Bridgen – who has filed for divorce this month – has given an interview to The Sunday Times in which she says “the anti-vax conspiracy theorist movement destroyed my life when Andrew became their foot soldier”.

She told the outlet: “The first alarming sign of radicalisation was when it was obvious that he was turning on us, when our child got terribly ill.

“There was no way of pleading with him. The human cost of radicalisation and the devastating impact it can have on individuals and their families, and in this case, our family, was spelled out for me for the first time in bold colours.

“I watched my life shatter into pieces as I lost access to the household bank account … and kicked out on the street with a child just in time for Christmas.”

She also alleged the Conservative Party “didn’t deal with this properly”, because they “didn’t pick up on signs of indoctrination and radicalisation”.

“The way they dealt with him was to cancel him – and that was the moment it opened the doors for all these people to come in,” Ms Bridgen said.

Ms Bridgen’s story has been described as “sad” and “horrific” by other Twitter/X users:

Mr Bridgen has responded to the article from journalist Caroline Wheeler and wrote on Twitter/X: “[It] rakes over the embers of a marriage which sadly, like so many during the pandemic, did not work out: a marriage with a small boy at the centre of it who will one day grow up and read her article.

“Caroline’s unquestionable journalistic talents - and the vast resources of The Sunday Times - would surely be much better deployed investigating the spike in excess deaths we have seen, and the evidence of a link between that spike and the Covid vaccines.”

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