Ann Widdecombe, the outspoken former Conservative minister who later became a prominent Brexit campaigner and reality television personality, has died at the age of 78. Known for her forthright views and no-nonsense attitude, Widdecombe was a household name even before her foray into entertainment.
A leading figure on the right of British politics for decades, Widdecombe served as a Member of Parliament for the Kent constituency of Maidstone for over 20 years, first elected in 1987. She was an enthusiastic early backer of Brexit, a stance she would later champion actively.
Her ministerial career began three years after becoming an MP, with a role as junior social security minister, followed by a promotion to the employment brief. In 1995, she became prisons minister, a position where she controversially defended a policy of chaining pregnant prisoners to prevent escapes. Following the 1997 Labour landslide, she held shadow cabinet positions under William Hague, serving as shadow health secretary from 1998 to 1999 and shadow home secretary from 1999 to 2001.
Widdecombe retired from politics in 2010, expressing disappointment at not being offered a place in the House of Lords by then-Prime Minister David Cameron. However, she later returned to the political arena as a prominent Brexit campaigner, winning a seat as a Brexit Party MEP for South West England in the 2019 European Parliament election. She served until the UK's departure from the EU at the end of January 2020. In 2023, she re-joined Reform UK, the party she had defected to from the Conservatives in later life, taking on the role of immigration and justice spokesperson.
Beyond her political career, Widdecombe reinvented herself as a reality TV star, notably appearing on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010 shortly after leaving Parliament. Despite describing her own dance moves as "galumphing," she reached the semi-final. Her showbiz career also included participation in Celebrity Big Brother and starring as the Evil Queen in a pantomime production of Snow White. She continued to write, publishing four fiction novels and an autobiography, and made numerous broadcast appearances, including guest hosting the news quiz Have I Got News for You.
Born in Bath, Somerset, in 1947, Widdecombe studied Latin at Birmingham University and then Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University before her election as a Runnymede District councillor. She was a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship and held staunchly socially conservative views, opposing abortion, assisted dying, and gay rights, while supporting the reintroduction of the death penalty. She was highly critical of David Cameron's decision to legalise gay marriage and, in 2019, sparked controversy by suggesting science might one day "produce an answer" to being gay.
In the 1990s, she converted to Catholicism, stating to The Times that "To have a church which calls a sin a sin and has done with it is a blessed relief." For her services to politics and public life, particularly her opposition to abortion and assisted dying, she was awarded a papal honour as Dame of the Order of St Gregory in 2013.
Throughout her career, Widdecombe was known for her resilience and sharp wit. She faced cruel comments about her appearance, with one newspaper dubbing her "Doris Karloff," but famously brushed them off, saying: "I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell." She was also not afraid to criticise her Conservative colleagues, famously remarking that Michael Howard had "something of the night about him." Despite being one of the few female MPs in the 1980s, she had little patience for feminists, whom she described as "whingers." Reflecting on her political career in 2016, she quipped, "I never went round looking for problems so I never found them.
The only problem I found as a woman MP were there were insufficient loos."
A keen animal lover, Widdecombe was one of the few Conservative MPs to oppose fox-hunting. Her devotion led her to create a section of her website, the Widdyweb, dedicated to her pet cats, and she adopted goats and became the patron of a donkey sanctuary. Her long-term friend, broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, described her as a "curious mix of Danny DeVito and Margaret Rutherford." She shared her London home with her widowed mother, Rita, until her mother's death in 2007. In a 2010 interview with BBC's Woman's Hour, she joked about the loneliness of being an MP, saying, "I like my own company very much indeed, just as well because I might be the only one who does."
