Ann Widdecombe, who has died aged 78, enjoyed a level of prominence in public life that was unusual for a politician whose most senior role in government was as a mid-level minister.
That was partly due to her robust opinions on a range of issues, some informed by her Christian faith – which she never shied away from voicing. It also helped that she was instantly recognisable, said The Times, with her pudding-bowl haircut, no-nonsense manner and rasping voice. In a typically forthright appraisal, she said of herself: “I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight and a spinster – what the hell.”
As a politician, her most significant action was arguably sinking Michael Howard’s leadership bid following the party’s defeat in 1997. The pair had feuded at the Home Office, and Widdecombe got her revenge by giving a speech in Parliament in which she tore into her ex-boss’s character and record; her leaked private comment – that there was “something of the night about him” – followed him for years.
Second career
Yet Widdecombe was a kinder, more sensitive person than her uncompromising “carapace” suggested, said The Guardian. This became more apparent when she retired from front-line politics, and embarked on an unexpected second career as a TV personality. On “Strictly Come Dancing”, she gamely allowed herself to be hauled across the dancefloor like a sack of potatoes; she was a runner-up on “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2018; and she appeared in several pantomimes.
The public learnt that “Widdy” had for years acted as a surrogate mother-figure to the children of a local kebab shop owner, said The Daily Telegraph, and that she had spent thousands to get a nephew off drugs. When, in 2009, the Telegraph published its report about MPs’ expenses, she was singled out as one of the “saints” at Westminster, reinforcing the view that whatever else she was, she was not corruptible.
Westminster controversies
Widdecombe was born in 1947. Her father was a civil servant in the Admiralty Office. Although she was Anglican, she was sent to a Catholic boarding school. She read Latin at Birmingham University, and then PPE at Oxford, where she became involved in student politics and had her only boyfriend: Colin Maltby was president of the Oxford Union. On graduating, she worked first for Unilever, and later as a university administrator.
Widdecombe spent years trying to become a Tory MP, applying to scores of constituencies. She stood twice unsuccessfully before finally being elected MP for Maidstone in 1987; she would represent that part of Kent for 23 years. At Westminster, she soon made her mark with the first in a series of aggressive efforts to restrict access to abortion. She also supported capital punishment, and voted against the repeal of Section 28, the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools, and civil partnerships. When the Church of England allowed the ordination of women priests, Widdecombe converted to Catholicism.
As prisons minister from 1995, she made waves by seeming to defend the practice of female prisoners being kept in handcuffs during childbirth. In fact, they were only shackled until they went into labour, and after they’d given birth, but the public was not impressed by the distinction and in the media she was dubbed Doris Karloff. Her row with Howard was over his sacking of the director of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, which she thought unfair. From 1999 to 2001, she was shadow home secretary.
Having insisted that she’d never leave the Tories, she defected to the Brexit Party in 2019 and later joined Reform UK. Since 2010, she had lived in a bungalow at the edge of Dartmoor that she had named Widdecombe’s Rest. She was found dead there in July with serious injuries; police have opened a murder investigation.