- Andrew Bridgen was suspended and later expelled from the Tory party last year
The wife of anti-vaxxer MP Andrew Bridgen who compared the Covid vaccine rollout to the Holocaust has claimed her marriage was torn apart after conspiracy theorists ‘radicalised’ her husband.
When the pandemic broke out, the former Tory MP quickly became a loud voice campaigning against vaccinations.
The North West Leicestershire MP was suspended and later expelled from the Conservative Party after he branded the life-savings jabs as ‘the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust’.
But it was not only his career within the party that came to a sudden end but also his marriage to his wife of seven years, Nevena.
The classically trained opera singer filed for divorce earlier this month after claiming she and her son had been left homeless after the MP, 59, ‘abandoned them’.
The wife of MP Andrew Bridgen who compared the Covid vaccine rollout to the Holocaust has claimed her marriage was torn apart after conspiracy theorists ‘radicalised’ her husband. Pictured: Andrew and Nevena Bridgen at a Royal Garden Party
The MP was suspended and later expelled from the Conservative Party after he branded the life-savings jabs as ‘the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust’. Pictured: Bridgen at anti-vaccine protest
She told The Sunday Times: ‘The anti-vax conspiracy theorist movement destroyed my life when Andrew became their foot soldier.’
The mother-of-one said her life had been torn apart by a ‘sect’ that she claimed had ‘taken over’ her husband making him believe he needed to ‘get rid of her’ as she did not ‘fully align with his extremist beliefs’.
The MP, who briefly joined the Reclaim Party, has become ‘radicalised’ according to his wife since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out and according to reports has tweeted about the vaccination more than 100 times since 2022.
He initially began to warn that ‘no healthy children should be vaccinated’ but his position continued to harden until he called for the vaccination to be dropped all together.
One day, Mrs Bridgend decided to confront her husband about his views after he had been away for substantial period of time.
She claimed he told her that the whole of ‘humanity was at stake’ and that he was saving the world – something his son, who was born in 2018, would be proud of.
‘I felt like I was in that Matrix film and that he was telling me he was the chosen one,’ she told the paper. ‘Except this is not blockbuster movie, this is my life.’
The situation came to a head when Mr Bridgen allegedly ignored calls from his wife while at a global campaign against vaccinations event in Sweden while their young son lay in hospital.
Bridgen surprisingly quit as the only MP in Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party in December over a ‘difference in direction’.
Mr Bridgen had only represented the fringe outfit for seven months after being kicked out of the Conservatives over a social media post describing Covid-19 vaccinations as ‘the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust’.
It was then the 43-year-old singer decided that her husband had become encaptivated by what she called a ‘cult’.
Mrs Bridgen partially blames the Conservative party for not dealing with his radicalisation ‘properly’.
She said: ‘They didn’t pick up the early 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.
‘Suddenly there were all these people coming into our lives and taking over. There is this parallel reality that is very present out there. And I’m in the middle of it all trying desperately to keep our family together.’
Mrs Bridgen is now living in a flat with her son, which her sister had to pay for, living on benefits while she looks to find a job.
Bridgen continues to pay for their son but does not help with his wife’s living-costs, claiming she still has access to a small salary as an opera singer- something she disputes.
Mr Bridgen was made Reclaim’s first MP in early May. The anti-vaxxer announced he would stand against the Conservatives at the next general election but refused to trigger a by-election sooner.
In December, Mr Bridgen made a surprise move and quit his position as the only MP in Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party citing a ‘difference in direction’.
‘I have come to this decision purely because of a difference in the direction of the party,’ he said in a statement.
MailOnline has contacted Mr Bridgen and the Conservative Party for comment.
