Ann Widdecombe, redoubtable Tory politician who was robust on moral questions and Brexit

Ann Widdecombe, who has died aged 78, was a formidable Conservative politician, later of the Brexit Party and Reform UK, who took an uncompromising stand on moral issues, and was a leading Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism.

Single, 5ft 1in, rotund and crowned until her latter years by pudding-basin dark hair, as a Home Office minister she earned the soubriquet of “Doris Karloff”. In 2010 she showed a lighter – though still inflexible – persona on Strictly Come Dancing, reaching the quarter-final despite caustic comments from the judges. Thereafter she flirted with self-caricature, notably letting herself be photographed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Her greatest political success was to torpedo Michael Howard’s bid for the Tory leadership after the party’s rout in 1997. Paying off an old score from their time at the Home Office, she suggested there was “something of the night” about her former boss, who had family ties to Transylvania; his campaign stalled and William Hague was elected. 

When Howard did become leader in 2005, Widdecombe said she had nothing to retract, but it was “time to look to the future”.

It was as Howard’s deputy, responsible for prisons, that she gained her hardline image, notably through an episode when a woman prisoner was manacled while in labour. She was mistakenly reported as defending the practice, and though she threatened to sue, the mud stuck.

She believed that Howard was pursuing a vendetta against Derek Lewis, head of the prison service, whom he ultimately sacked, putting her in an impossible situation; she got her own back in spades.

Widdecombe maintained her uncompromising line on law and order – and, to some Tory discomfort, against foxhunting – after Hague appointed her shadow home secretary in 1999. But by the time she left the Commons in 2010 she was seen in a very different light.

Though she had once declared: “So what if I am ugly? There are worse things than being ugly, you know,” she went blonde and lost nearly three stone; the best diet book, she said, would consist of two words: “eat” and “less”.

She wrote four novels, and showed a new side of herself on television: presenting debates on social issues, appearing on Celebrity Fit Club and twice on Have I Got News for You; after the second time, when she was guest host, she said she had nearly walked out because of “filth” from the comedian Jimmy Carr.

Then came Strictly, in which she participated on condition that no attempt was made to restrain or reveal her mountainous bosom; that she should not have to dance in heels; and that – in the view of the judges – she should not have to master the steps.

Yet she worked hard with her gracious professional partner Anton Du Beke, bewitching many viewers as she brought a touch of comedy to the show, insisting that she would not follow the precedent set by the equally unrhythmic John Sergeant and retire from the contest.

Her private side also came into the open; she had helped the sons of the owner of her favourite Greek restaurant up the educational ladder, and spent thousands trying to get a nephew off drugs. Her assertion when a minister that she would give up her career should her elderly parents need looking after seemed no more than a statement of fact.

What appealed about Widdecombe most was her total frankness and incorruptibility. Columnists might scoff at her self-confessed virginity and her unfashionably robust opinions, but in an era of spin she earned plaudits for saying exactly what she thought.

When The Telegraph triggered a political tsunami in 2009 by publishing details of MPs’ expenses claims, she emerged as one of the relatively few “saints”. After Michael Martin was forced out as Speaker over his handling of the revelations, there was a surge of support for her to succeed him.

But with at most a year of the parliament remaining, her intention not to stand again told against her and she was eliminated after the second ballot, having secured 30 votes. By then, though, she was a heroine to the media that had mocked her.

Ann Noreen Widdecombe was born in Bath on October 4 1947, the daughter of Murray Widdecombe, a senior Admiralty civil servant, and the former Rita Plummer. She was educated at the Royal Naval School, Singapore, and the “very, very strict” La Sainte Union convent in Bath, joining the Church of England when she left.

She read Latin at Birmingham University and PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she had her one serious romance, and in 1972 she became treasurer of the Union. She resigned in protest when the proctors overturned a ban on a member standing in elections.

On graduating, she went into marketing with Unilever. From 1975 until her election to Parliament, she was senior financial administrator at London University.

Widdecombe became a Runnymede district councillor, and in 1980 headed a Bow Group panel that proposed more thorough Conservative candidate selection, with a 48-hour process replacing the standard 20-minute interview.

She fought Burnley in 1979, and four years later, as vice-chairman of Women for Defence, took on Dr David Owen at Devonport. In 1987 she took Maidstone with a majority of 10,364; she represented the constituency (Maidstone and the Weald from 1997) for 23 years.

At Westminster she amended David Alton’s 1988 Bill lowering the time limit for abortion to permit terminations after 18 weeks for young rape victims; the Bill fell. She next promoted her own Bill to outlaw other abortions over 18 weeks, down from 28; Labour’s Dennis Skinner talked it out. She tried again in 1990.

She also campaigned for help for people caring for elderly or disabled relatives at home, refusing to sign an all-party committee’s report on community care and clashing with fellow Tories at its launch.

After the Eastbourne by-election caused by the IRA’s assassination of Margaret Thatcher’s devoted supporter, Ian Gow, Widdecombe told the victorious Liberal Democrat he was the beneficiary of murder.

In November 1990 she became PPS to the Foreign Office minister Tristan Garel-Jones. When Mrs Thatcher was toppled weeks later, she supported Douglas Hurd for the leadership; the victorious John Major brought her into his government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Social Security. Soon after, she caused a furore by suggesting that the poor should avoid supermarkets and shop at market stalls. Told that families were starving, she responded: “Who are they, and why can’t they manage?”

Widdecombe left the Church of England in 1992 in protest at the ordination of women. After a meeting with Cardinal Hume she was received into the Catholic church at Westminster Cathedral, followed by High Mass in the Crypt of the Commons. She went on to criticise Catholic bishops for failing to welcome Anglican defectors.

In June 1993 she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Employment, with special responsibility for Sheffield, and a year later Major promoted her to Minister of State.

In June 1995 she arrived at the Home Office as minister for prisons and immigration, both political hot potatoes. Prison governors jeered her following Howard’s sacking of Derek Lewis after embarrassing escapes from Parkhurst and Whitemoor; they did not know he had overridden her.

In 1996 the storm broke over the handcuffing of prisoners about to give birth. She defended the practice (20 had escaped from hospitals since 1990) but insisted she had not endorsed the manacling of prisoners during labour. During the furore she accused other women MPs of implying that she was jealous as she had no children of her own. The Spectator named her Minister of the Year for 1996.

The 1997 election lost, Widdecombe backed Peter Lilley for the leadership. She savaged Howard in the Commons: claiming he had misled MPs over the removal of the governor of Parkhurst in 1995, she accused him of “demeaning” the office of Home Secretary through his “mistreatment” of Lewis.

Howard got even by blocking her appointment to Hague’s team. But a barnstorming speech against hunting, and incisive questioning of Tony Blair over £1 million donated to Labour by the Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, proved her too formidable for a shrunken party to ignore, and after a year Hague brought her back as Shadow Health Secretary. At the 1998 party conference she dispensed with her notes to lambast Labour’s handling of the NHS.

A year later, Hague made her shadow home secretary. Her call for zero tolerance of cannabis use was well received among grassroots Tories, but unnerved colleagues who, unlike her, had experimented at university and feared exposure.

When Hague stepped down in 2001 after a further heavy defeat, Widdecombe was urged to stand, but discovered that most of her support was outside Parliament. She supported Michael Ancram, then Kenneth Clarke, for the leadership, and when Iain Duncan Smith was elected returned to the back benches and her blossoming television career.

Alongside her fellow Catholic, Edward Leigh, she led the resistance in 2003 to the repeal of Section 28 banning the promotion of homosexuality by local councils.

When David Cameron – who had been Howard’s special adviser and go-between in his dealings with Derek Lewis – was elected leader in 2005, Widdecombe voiced reservations. She opposed his “A-list” of female, ethnic and celebrity candidates, which she reckoned “an insult to women”.

Taking office in 2010 as she left the Commons, Cameron asked her to become Ambassador to the Holy See; she declined, later accusing him of snubbing her by not nominating her for a peerage. She was appointed a Papal Dame in 2013.

She became a regular in pantomime, and came second in the 2018 series of Celebrity Big Brother. But when Theresa May’s failure to secure Brexit forced Britain in 2019 to hold elections for the European Parliament, Widdecombe returned to politics, joining the Brexit Party and being elected an MEP for South West England.

During her brief stay in the Parliament, she accused the EU of reducing Britain to “slavery”. She also stood as the Brexit Party candidate for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport in the 2019 general election, securing 5.5 per cent of the vote.

In 2023, she joined Reform UK, serving as immigration and justice spokesperson. She sat out the 2024 election when the party won its first seats in the Commons, but afterwards pledged Reform UK to put illegal migrants in “secure reception centres”.

In 2025 she suffered a serious fall at home while rescuing a mouse from her cat.

Widdecombe lived with her mother in London until she died in 2007, aged 95, and latterly in Devon. Her recreations included researching the escape of Charles II.

​Ann Widdecombe, October 4 1947, death announced July 10 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]