Ann Widdecombe: uncompromising politician who embraced TV fame

A Life of Uncompromising Views and TV Fame

Ann Widdecombe was a politician who defied convention. She was a devout Catholic with hardline views on morality and law and order, but she did not take herself overly seriously. Her extraordinary appearances on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010 won her a new and unexpected fanbase. She had specified to the producers that she wouldn’t do anything "immodest or suggestive", but was more than happy to look ridiculous – "galumphing like an elephant", as she put it.

Widdecombe had stepped down from Westminster in 2010 at the age of 62, after 23 years as an MP, seven of them as an uncompromising and often divisive junior minister under John Major. But having been passed over for a peerage, she had no interest in a quiet retirement. She remained unyielding in her personal morality, opposing abortion and resisting any move to liberalise LGBTQ+ rights.

Despite her entertaining gameness and very British eccentricity, Widdecombe remained a straight-talker – and firm hardliner – throughout her career. Her reputation as a straight-talker had been earned in parliament, most famously when in 1997 she told a journalist her Conservative colleague and former ministerial boss Michael Howard had "something of the night" about him. That has been credited with sinking his hopes of taking the Conservative leadership (though he did so six years later).

The previous year, as prisons minister, she had provoked fury by defending the government’s policy of handcuffing pregnant prisoners during antenatal appointments, saying: "Some people might think it’s a bit harsh, but I don’t think it’s a bit harsh." Widdecombe’s death and the circumstances surrounding it are significant, given her high-profile career and outspoken views on morality and law and order.