A tribute to Ann Widdecombe

I disagreed with almost everything Ann Widdecombe said, from women not working, to women not being ordained as priests, to women not marrying other women, and more. She railed in private and public against divorce and abortion, both of them mainstays of the feminist movement, and assisted dying, and she left the Conservative party over its failure to deliver a proper Brexit (she always said Brexit with rolled rr’s, “Brrrexit” I can hear her now). But she is proof that if you go into politics, it really helps if you know what you think, it helps to articulate it clearly, and it helps to stick to your guns. Current crop of politicians, nota bene.

She was the nation’s maiden aunt, almost its Joan of Arc

You do not flip flop about, you do not trolley, you do not U-turn, you do not change Prime Ministers as quickly as you sack football managers, you do not bear the impression of the last person who sat on you, you do not play to the gallery (unless you’re on Strictly with Anton Du Beke and the judges are holding up twos and threes).

Ann was living proof that if you say what you mean, and you mean what you say, people will listen to you, and people will respect your views, even if they cordially loathe you and them. It doesn’t mean you will end up in the Lords or in the cabinet – Ann was never promoted unlike most men beyond her ability – but you will meet your maker with the cleanest of consciences.

She was the very definition of a modern conviction politician.

She had values and she really stuck to them, in the best Tory tradition of Margaret Thatcher and now Kemi Badenoch.

She knew her own mind. I tend to agree with Christopher Hitchens that God is Not Great, and much of Ann’s moral certitude – unfashionable now – she found in religion. She had the zeal of the Catholic convert she was.

My goodness, it’s refreshing to think of her and to remember her after all these milquetoast men who don’t really have any convictions, or opinions – look at Andy Burnham’s weak u-turn yesterday on Israel – and have no plan to speak of either as far as we know.

I spent three weeks with Ann in the Big Brother House in 2018. It was an education, and a peculiar privilege.

Above all, it was such a relief to have someone to argue with who knew who Edward Heath was – who knew who RAB Butler was – who knew her history and her politics and her poetry, who could quote Shakespeare, Milton, Erskine May, and Burke.

She had everyone wrapped round her little finger – even the trans woman whose name I can’t bring myself to repeat, who Ann couldn’t quite bring herself to call “she.” Let’s draw a veil. Some mornings, I brought her tea and biscuits – two digestives – in bed, like a smitten puppy. She remained completely impervious to my charms. She had no need of friendship. Or attention. That was why I liked her.

Ann was special. Some housemates were more equal than others (or had better agents) and she had her own bathroom while the rest of us had a shower block and took baths in the middle of the room on camera (me in my pants).

She was allowed to write her weekly Express column while we didn’t even have pen or paper to distract us from the endless tedium. She never cooked. She never cleared up. She allowed us to all wait on her hand and foot. She corrected the grammar of Ginuwine the rapper or Dapper Laughs the comedian. She never played to the camera, or appeared to, but the cameras loved her as much as the viewers, no – the viewers adored her, as the results showed.

I was voted out second (the trans woman I can’t name was out first and did the exit of shame) and Ann came a deserved second to the winner, a transvestite.

In 2019, we contested each other again. I was the lead candidate for an pro-EU party called Change UK in the South West, she was lead candidate for the Brexit Party, and, again, she handed me my arse on a plate.

She and the Brexit Party wiped the floor with the opposition. She was exultant at the count in Falmouth, and so she should have been. She got 611,000 votes (I got 46,000) and went to take up her seat in Brussels and Strasbourg, to my envy but never to my surprise.

In the Big Brother House, I had a bet with her – we were trying to remember a quote, I can’t remember what it was, to do with Charles II – and she said it was one Shakespeare play, I contended it was another. We had no way of checking as we had no reading materials, or internet, let alone a Dictionary of Quotations or Oxford Book Of Poetry.

I said the winner will buy the other a drink in the American bar of the Savoy and every time I saw her after that I said: “I owe you a whisky.”

Two years ago, she did my Difficult Woman podcast from Dartmoor. A shelfie of hardback Hansards was the backdrop. She was a celebrity – most people under 40 only know her from Strictly – but at heart she was a proper parliamentarian.

Even if you disagreed with her, she was reassuring. She was the nation’s maiden aunt, almost its Joan of Arc (she died a virgin, I think). Firm but fair. That made her lovable whatever her expressed opinions, or politics. You knew where you were with her. She knew who she was.

When the Daily Telegraph revealed details of MPs’ expenses in 2009, it described her as one of Westminster’s “saints.” That doesn’t surprise me at all.

She is now with her maker and her Lord. I’m sure that when the Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe arrived at the pearly gates they swung open, and I’m sure even now angels and archangels are bringing her tea and biscuits in bed.