Ann Widdecombe

At 76 years old, Ann Widdecombe has this physical status:

In 1974, Widdecombe was personal assistant to Michael Ancram in the February and October general elections of that year. From 1976 to 1978, Widdecombe was a councillor on Runnymede District Council in Surrey.

She contested the seat of Burnley in Lancashire in the 1979 general election and then, against David Owen, the Plymouth Devonport seat in the 1983 general election. In 1983, she (along with Lady Olga Maitland and Virginia Bottomley) was co-founder of Women and Families for Defence, a group founded in opposition to the anti-nuclear Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.

Widdecombe was first elected to the House of Commons, for the Conservatives, in the 1987 general election as member for the constituency of Maidstone (which became Maidstone and The Weald in 1997).

Widdecombe joined John Major's government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security in 1990. In 1993, she was moved to the Department of Employment, and she was promoted to Minister of State the following year. In 1995, she joined the Home Office as Minister of State for Prisons and visited every prison in the UK.

After the Conservative landslide defeat at the 1997 general election, she served as Shadow Health Secretary between 1998–1999 and later as Shadow Home Secretary from 1999 to 2001 under the leadership of William Hague.

During the 2001 Conservative leadership election, she could not find sufficient support amongst Conservative MPs for her leadership candidacy. She first supported Michael Ancram, who was eliminated in the first round, and then Kenneth Clarke, who lost in the final round. She afterwards declined to serve in Iain Duncan Smith's Shadow Cabinet (although she indicated on the television programme When Louis Met..., prior to the leadership contest, that she wished to retire to the backbenches anyway).

In the 2005 leadership election, she initially supported Kenneth Clarke again. Once he was eliminated, she turned support towards Liam Fox. Following Fox's subsequent elimination, she took time to reflect before finally declaring for David Davis. She expressed reservations over the eventual winner David Cameron, feeling that he did not, like the other candidates, have a proven track record, and she was later a leading figure in parliamentary opposition to his A-List policy. At the October 2006 Conservative Conference, she was Chief Dragon in a political version of the television programme Dragons' Den, in which A-list candidates were invited to put forward a policy proposal, which was then torn apart by her team of Rachel Elnaugh, Oliver Letwin and Michael Brown.

In an interview with Metro in September 2006 she stated that if Parliament were of a normal length, it was likely she would retire at the next general election. She confirmed her intention to stand down to The Observer's Pendennis diary in September 2007, and again in October 2007 after Prime Minister Gordon Brown quashed speculation of an autumn 2007 general election.

In November 2006, she moved into the house of an Islington Labour Councillor to experience life on a council estate, her response to her experience being "Five years ago I made a speech in the House of Commons about the forgotten decents. I have spent the last week on estates in the Islington area finding out that they are still forgotten."

Widdecombe was one of the 98 MPs who voted to keep their expense details secret. When the expenses claims were leaked, however, Widdecombe was described by The Daily Telegraph as one of the "saints" amongst all MPs.

In May 2009, following the resignation of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons, it was reported that Widdecombe was gathering support for election as interim Speaker until the next general election. On 11 June 2009, she confirmed her bid to be the Speaker. She made it through to the second ballot but came last and was eliminated.

Widdecombe retired from politics at the 2010 general election. It was rumoured that she would be a Conservative candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in 2012, but she refused. She has since spoken about her opposition to the Coalition Government and her surprise at not being given a peerage by David Cameron.

In 2016, she supported Brexit during the 2016 EU referendum and, following the resignation of David Cameron, endorsed Andrea Leadsom in her candidacy for election for the leadership of the governing Conservative Party.

In 2019 she returned to politics as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the European parliament elections in South West England, which were held on 23 May, though she maintained that she would still vote for the Conservatives in the local elections that took place three weeks before. She was expelled by the Conservative Party immediately after her announcement. Widdecombe had considered joining the Brexit Party in March 2019, but joined later, in May.

Widdecombe said that her decision to stand resulted from the Government's failure to deliver Britain's departure from the EU on schedule. "Both major parties need a seismic shock," she said, "to see the extent of public disgust." She subsequently won her seat.

Widdecombe became a member of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).

Widdecombe stood as a candidate for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport in the 2019 UK general election, coming a distant third but retaining her deposit with 5.5% of the vote. Nigel Farage said that she was told by the Conservative Party that she would be part of their Brexit negotiations if she stood down as a candidate.

Stage acting career

Following her retirement, Widdecombe made her stage debut, on 9 December 2011, at the Orchard Theatre, Dartford in the Christmas pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, alongside Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood. In April 2012, she had a ten-minute non-singing cameo part in Gaetano Donizetti's comic opera La Fille du Regiment, playing the Duchesse de Crackentorp. Widdecombe reprised her pantomime performance, again with Horwood, at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe in December 2012.

Widdecombe stepped in at short notice to play the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, at Bridlington Spa in December 2016. She replaced Lorraine Chase, who had been injured in an accident two weeks before rehearsals were due to commence. This was Widdecombe's first appearance as a pantomime 'baddie'; a role she told the press she had always hoped for.

In December 2017 Widdecombe played the Empress of China in the pantomime Aladdin at the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft. The production was the theatre's most successful pantomime to date.

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