𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The abiding image of Ann Widdecombe will almost certainly be one of her show-stopping appearances alongside professional dancer Anton du Beke on Strictly Come Dancing. Her highly entertaining stint on the BBC show in the autumn of 2010 provided much-needed mirth for the nation. Ann knew she couldn’t dance well but, with typical good grace and humour, gave it her best shot despite the jibes.

Accordingly, the circumstances of her sudden death aged 78 aside – currently the focus of a murder investigation by Devon and Cornwall Police – the acres of tributes that will rightly accompany her passing will largely focus on the reality TV appearances that made her a household name in later life, and her occasional controversies. The latter were often the result of blunt speaking and an inability to mince her words which was as much her trademark as her self-professed spinsterhood and love of cats. As she put it so succinctly in this paper, she often went “where angels fear to tread” and was undoubtedly one of the most formidable politicians of her generation, first for the Conservatives and later for the Brexit Party and Reform UK.

For her part, I think Ann would want to be remembered first and foremost as a campaigner. And her long career in politics, as an MP, MEP and champion of Brexit, alongside her 20-years as a weekly columnist for the Daily Express, bears that out. Whether arguing that the rights of the UK should trump those of the EU superstate, against drugs and promiscuity, or in steadfast support for free speech – even when it placed her in polite opposition to this newspaper’s campaign for assisted dying, with which she could not agree – she never stopped fighting for the causes she believed in.

Cloud9 Management, which represented Ann for the last decade, said: “Her life and career were driven by her strong Christian values and commitment to public service. She loved the cut and thrust of political debate and, 16 years after leaving Parliament, was still actively campaigning for Reform UK and offering forthright views on the hot topics of the day across numerous radio and television programmes. Ann was a valued patron of many causes, particularly her animal charities.”

She never lamented the fact she had passed from pure politics into the realms of media personality and national treasurehood – though she disliked the suggestion she might be one. She saw herself as a “Marmite” person – hated and adored in equal measure. The many tributes at her passing from across the political spectrum and showbiz attest to the latter, even if she occasionally showed signs of enjoying her notoriety.

In her final column for the Express in January last year, she wrote: “One of the joys of column writing has been the range of topics I can cover and seeing what sparks a response. More of you wrote with helpful suggestions as to how to change a duvet cover than responded to my views on the Middle East. Alas nobody offered any advice on how to get a cat to play with its claws in but my piece about ageing and preferring to drive in daylight touched an amusing chord!”

Nevertheless, campaigning remained her lifeblood and only on Monday she called freshly-invigorated to talk about fathers forced into bankruptcy, having to sell their homes or facing jail after falling foul of the Child Maintenance Service. She firmly believed that the statutory body that calculates, collects and enforces child maintenance payments between separated parents was “a scandal waiting to explode”.

It was, she insisted, “even bigger than that of the Post Office and its defective computer programmes: a scandal which also involves suicides, imprisonment and wrecked lives”. Fathers were being hounded for erroneous payments or for amounts of money that vastly outweighed their actual incomes and left unable to appeal. That she has not lived to see justice is an abiding unfairness to all involved.

Born Ann Noreen Widdecombe in Bath on October 4, 1947, the daughter of Rita and James, a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, she was educated at La Sainte Union Convent, Bath; Birmingham University; and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She worked in the marketing department at Unilever from 1973-75 and later as a senior administrator at the University of London from 1975-87 while she fought to become a Conservative MP. After being beaten in Burnley in 1979 and Plymouth, Devonport, in 1983, she became the MP for Maidstone in 1987.

Once in Parliament, she quickly made an impact with her no-nonsense, brisk and bustling approach. In 1990 she was appointed an Under-Secretary at the Department of Social Security and, three years later, held a similar post at the Department of Employment. But it was as a Home Office minister from 1995 until the Tories were voted out of office in 1997, that she became truly well-known. She was at the centre of a vicious row when she was rolled out to defend the shackling of a pregnant woman prisoner to a bed, leading to her being nicknamed “Doris Karloff”, in part thanks to her rigid bob haircut.

But the attacks and sneers, sometimes even from her own side, simply served to energise her. She took the flak without flinching and even thrived on the controversy. One of her great gifts – which made her stand out in an age of scripted responses, soundbites and spin – was her ability to speak at length without any notes. That was why she was such a commanding presence on the platform and in the Commons.

Equally, she was never predictable and could not be pigeonholed – as evidenced by her passionate opposition to fox hunting, despite her instinctive Toryism.

Later she had two major run-ins with colleagues, famously with former Home Secretary Michael Howard whom she described as having “something of the night about him”. The devastating soundbite helped derail his initial attempt to win the Tory leadership – something he achieved later – and will follow him to the end.

She also clashed with Michael Portillo when he failed in his own bid to become Tory leader in 2001, insisting she would never have served under him. Unafraid and always principled, she rebelled against her party in 1990 when she refused to sign an all-party committee report on community care, believing that more support should be given to carers of the elderly and disabled in their own homes.

In Opposition, she became shadow Health Secretary, tormenting her opposite number, Frank Dobson, without mercy. Later, as shadow Home Secretary, she was to make life difficult for Jack Straw.

She never married, living quietly in the West Country with the latest in a series of cats – among them Pugwash and Carruthers – when not working in London or campaigning. Her last cat, Aloysius, survives her. Though she had no children of her own, she took a close interest in those of friends and was a devoted aunt to her late brother’s children.

Harriet Bastide, who was Ann’s PA for 31 years, recalled: “Ann was not my boss, she was a genuine friend to me and my family… she took a wonderfully close interest in my children and I think felt she took on a parental and grandparental role.

“We all adored her – regardless of how often she phoned me about something seemingly unimportant on a Sunday afternoon. The last time we saw her, she thoroughly enjoyed a large brandy by the fire at our home in Sussex, while chatting over the issues of the day. We had a good-humoured rule that she was not allowed to make any additions or amendments to her diary, however small but she told everyone that I had to do it as I was God Almighty of the Diary! Otherwise, she mainly called me “Kiddo” despite the fact that I am actually now 53!”

Ann was as forthright as a deeply religious person as she was a politician. In the 1990s she converted to Roman Catholicism because of her opposition to the ordination of women by the Church of England.

She once told an interviewer: “I have never been so spiritually content. I pray morning and night and several times in between. I speak to Him whenever I have a problem and can sense His response.” In 2013 she was appointed a Papal Dame for her services to politics and public life, particularly in recognition of her stance on moral issues, including her long-standing opposition to abortion.

Like Margaret Thatcher she never had much sympathy for the feminist cause, denouncing them as “whingers”. She retired from Parliament in 2010, entered the BBC’s popular Strictly Come Dancing TV programme that year.

Her performances, to use her own words, were “galumphing” and “elephantine”, and she regularly secured the lowest marks from the show’s judges. However she was saved time and again by the public’s phone-in votes, and survived until the round before the semi-finals, announcing: “I have never had such fun in my life.”

It was the beginning of her pivot to becoming a media personality. In 2012 she presented a short-lived quiz show, Cleverdicks, while also discovering a new career on stage, playing pantomime characters including the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. She also wrote a series of novels and a memoir.

But she could not remain away from frontline politics forever, and became a prominent voice in the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum. Her Euroscepticism also saw her returned as a Member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party in 2019 alongside Nigel Farage. In Farage’s 2020 farewell speech in the European Parliament, he and Ann memorably flouted the rules with raucous clapping, cheering and waving of miniature Union flags as they left the chamber alongside allies.

She joined Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit Party, in 2023 and spoke at its party conference the following year as its immigration spokeswoman. That year she wrote in the Express: “Despite the outcome of the referendum, the outcome of the 2019 election and the supposed exit from the EU in 2020 there is no party of Brexit at Westminster. The EU probably still cannot believe its luck. It is time for something new, time for Reform.”

Ann always loved Express readers and appreciated their comments, supportive or otherwise. In her final column, Ann wrote: “Thank you also for your encouragement when, with some controversial topics, I have gone where angels fear to tread!”