Ann Widdecombe: uncompromising politician who embraced TV fame

Ann Widdecombe giving a speech at the Reform UK spring rally in Doncaster in 2024. Her last political role was as Reform’s immigration and justice spokesperson. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA View image in fullscreen Ann Widdecombe giving a speech at the Reform UK spring rally in Doncaster in 2024. Her last political role was as Reform’s immigration and justice spokesperson. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA Ann Widdecombe: uncompromising politician who embraced TV fame Former Conservative minister, who later joined Reform UK and became an unlikely celebrity, was found dead at her Devon home on Thursday On Wednesday, shortly after Nigel Farage announced he would stand down from his parliamentary seat in Clacton to trigger a byelection, Ann Widdecombe appeared by video link on Talk TV to praise his decision. “This is a very decisive man,” Widdecombe told the interviewer , speaking with the same forthright conviction that had defined her controversial political career and more eccentric parliamentary afterlife. Widdecombe, formerly a Conservative, joined the Brexit party – which later became Reform UK – in 2019 and Farage, she said, had shown “the sort of decision taking that is needed in the leader of the country”. The following morning, the 78-year-old was found dead at her Devon home, having sustained serious injuries. A 26-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder . 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. View image in fullscreen Ann Widdecombe made her final media appearance on Talk TV on Wednesday, a day before her death. Photograph: TalkTV But having been passed over for a peerage, she had no interest in a quiet retirement. Widdecombe may have been 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 – during which she was likened by the judges to the Ark Royal, a dalek in drag, Vera Duckworth’s grandmother, haemorrhoids and a lame canary – won her a new and unexpected fanbase. She had signed up for the programme months after leaving parliament because, she later said: “I’m having fun … I’m retired, remember? Retired? And I’m having huge fun.” Widdecombe 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. Asked some years later if she had any dancing tips for her fellow politician-turned-contestant Ed Balls, she told the Guardian : “I wouldn’t call that dancing, dear.” In another interview , she said: “I loved the fact that there was no responsibility. For years everything I’d done was going to affect people. With Strictly … it couldn’t affect anything. If I fell down in a heap on the floor, nobody suffered. People said: ‘Is this dignified?’ I said