SURELY to God it can’t be happening again? I thought, as I was tipped off that the police were treating Ann’s death as murder. But it was.
It’s the same ghastly awfulness that I felt nearly five years ago, when Ann Widdecombe’s and my good friend Sir David Amess was murdered. A day that was due to be spent watching Wimbledon and the World Cup suddenly turned into one with the broadcast media demanding memories of Ann.
Ann Widdecombe pictured at her property, Widdecombe’s Rest, back in 2018 Credit: Stuart Clarke
LBC presenter Iain Dale was friends with Ann for nearly 30 years Credit: Rex
It’s not that I am unused to going on radio and television to impart my supposed, or imagined, wisdom, but today was different.
I was being asked to talk about the brutal murder of a good friend, and someone I hugely respected.
And on the day I wrote an article for another newspaper about why men should cry more, and not be ashamed of it when they do.
During an afternoon and evening of LBC, BBC, Sky, Channel 4 News, Newsnight, Sky and more I only cracked once. She would have been proud of me. At least I hope she would.
I first met Ann Widdecombe nearly 30 years ago. I was running Politico’s – a newly opened political bookshop in Westminster. We had made some badges saying ‘Doris Karloff for Tory Leader’.
This was the nickname she had been given after she introduced a policy of shackling pregnant female prisoners if they were being transported to hospital, after several had absconded.
The myth somehow took hold that they were shackled during labour, but it was a total fiction – one which both Adam Boulton and Edwina Currie disgracefully repeated in media appearances yesterday, It. Never. Happened.
Anyway, Ann found the badges hilarious and bought several dozen of them.
We also commissioned a set of politically themed knickers. One pair, a black lacy set, had the phrase ‘Something of the Night’, the slogan she had invented to derail Michael Howard’s leadership campaign.
“But they they’re too small. They won’t fit,” she cried. A vision was forming in my mind… She was just leaving the shop when I noticed she had left the knickers on the counter.
So I yelled after her “Ann, you’ve forgotten your knickers!” And there can’t be many men that have said that to Ann Widdecombe.
Ann became an unlikely bestselling novelist. Her first novel, The Clematis Tree, was a huge success, but I do sometimes wonder why. She certainly had a unique way of selling it.
At the Tory Party Conference in 2000, where I was running the bookshop, I was rather alarmed at her marketing technique.
Like a market trader she would brandish the book and shout out: “No sex, no violence, no swearing!” Ann, I thought, “you’re at a Tory Party Conference!”, which, let’s face it usually has its fair share of all three.
But she proved me wrong – and we sold all 400 copies. The next year, she was back and was reprising her market trader act.
The last picture of Ann shows her during a politics chat on TalkTV on Wednesday Credit: TalkTV
Police arrive at the scene at Ann’s home in Dartmoor, Devon, yesterday Credit: Alamy
As she was screeching and signing, a delivery of Edwina Currie’s explosive new diaries arrived. All 200 of them.
Edwina had captured the headlines with the revelation that she and John Major had had an affair.
I quietly displayed a dozen of the Currie diaries next to Ann and waited for her to notice. She did not have a high opinion of Edwina.
Sure enough, she clocked them and changed her sales patter and pointed to Edwina’s tomes, shouting, “Very dirty diaries, get your clean novels here!”, pointing to her new book ‘An Act of Treachery’.
I used to take her to task for this as I had found a passage on page 158 where it was quite clear that the main character had had sex with her Nazi lover.
Ann denied this and described it as “wooing”. “Not in my house, it isn’t”, I’d reply.
Ann and I did a theatre tour of around 50 provincial theatres with our show ‘A Night with Ann Widdecombe’.
I’d interview her for the first half and then I’d host a Q&A. We didn’t have a script as such, but I knew the prompts to give so she could regale with audience with various stories and anecdotes.
Ann on Strictly Come Dancing with pro Anton Du Beke in 2010 Credit: PA
Ann joined Reform UK in 2023 and became the party’s Immigration and Justice spokesperson Credit: Reuters
I’d usually drive her to the venues and we’d chew over the issues of the day on the journey.
I remember once driving into London on the night of the Commons vote to allow gay people to adopt children. Conservative MPs had been whipped to vote against.
I told her why I thought it was right to allow gay people to adopt. I said that surely it was better for a child to be in a safe home with loving parents, whatever their sex, than stay in a children’s home for the rest of their childhood.
She maintained that stability for a child was very important, and then came out with this corker.
“It’s a well-known fact that gay relationships only last an average of two years!” I shot back: “That’s rubbish. In my experience it’s more like 20 minutes.”
I could see the cogs whirring in her brain and when she finally computed what I was implying she had the good grace to roar with laughter.
Ann rarely enjoyed my driving. She was a very good backseat driver, if you get my drift.
I remember one time, we had been to Porthcawl in South Wales and we’d had nothing to eat all day.
We need conversation on safety of our representatives
By Harry Cole, Editor-at-Large
I NEVER thought I would type the words: “And then the crowd went wild… for Ann Widdecombe”.
But that was the last time I saw the pocket rocket politician, enjoying the final act of her long career.
The darling of a Reform rally, she strode on stage at 5’1”, resplendent with her traditional handbag and newly acquired smoke machines and lasers.
Though not in stature, she was her very own brand of political giant to the very end.
While cops are keen to stress they are keeping an open mind at the motive of this vile murder, to lose a third politician in barbaric circumstances in just ten years sends a chill down the spine.
Eventually we will have the needed conversation about the safety and security of our leaders and representatives.
But in the meantime I hope some of those who were quick to belittle the threats faced by Nigel Farage – that he outlined in grim detail just 24 hours before Ann’s death – will finally put the politics aside and pause for thought.
After the show we stopped to get some petrol and stocked up on a bit of junk food – right in the middle of her diet.
I got onto the M4 and started opening the sandwich and packet of crisps and can of Lilt.
Ann nearly had a fit – OK I was driving with my knees but it was perfectly safe! “Do you not think you ought to have at least one hand on the steering wheel!” she screamed. So I got my own back.
I made her listen to the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure for the rest of the three-hour journey back. She never forgave me.
Iain says Ann was the ‘best of British’ Credit: Alamy
The presenter says his friend was a different breed of politician who spoke her mind Credit: Channel4
I asked her one day if people reacted differently to her when she dyed her hair blond. She said “people speak to me now, much m o r e s l o w w w w l l l y y y”.
The reaction to Ann’s death has in many ways been heartwarming, with people from across the political spectrum paying tribute to someone who made a difference.
She was never a cabinet minister. She never led her party, but ordinary people recognised her as that rare breed of politician – one with convictions, often borne out of her profound religious beliefs.
People didn’t have to agree with her to recognise someone who was out of the ordinary.
Tony Benn would have described her a signpost and the antithesis of a weathervane. She knew where she wanted to lead public opinion and beckoned people to follow.
If they didn’t, so be it. Kemi Badenoch has a touch of the Ann Widdecombes about her. Andy Burnham does not.
His ‘I’m like you act’ was not one Ann Widdecombe ever attempted to emulate.
“People think I’m a bit odd,” she once said. “Well they are right. I am.” And then proceeded to roar with laughter. She revelled in her oddness.
I’ve been in and around the political world for 40 years. In that time I have made comparatively few friends, as opposed to “friends”.
Ann was a true friend. We didn’t need to speak three times a week or visit each other’s houses often. But she was someone I knew I could turn to for help if ever I was in trouble.
Let me end by telling you the story of a friend of mine, Ashley Crossle, who, in 2003 had been selected as Tory candidate in Falmouth & Camborne in Cornwall.
His local Conservative Party discovered he was gay and tried to deselect him. He went through a terrible time. I told Ann about his plight.
She didn’t know him from Adam, but asked for his number and immediately swung into action.
Within days she was off down to Cornwall to speak for him and show her support.
And this, the woman, who Peter Tatchell tweeted yesterday was a ‘bigot’ and appeared to celebrate her death.
An utterly disgraceful thing to do, but he wasn’t alone. Other elements of the Left showed their true colours.
Luckily, there were plenty of Labour and LibDem supporters who showed decorum and grace and acted as normal human beings do at times of grief and horror. Good on them.
Theodore Roosevelt once said you had to be “in the arena” to make a difference. Ann did.
To her constituents. To the Conservative Party and then the Brexit Party and Reform UK. Right up to the end she was barnstorming around the country speaking up for the causes she believed in.
In short, she was loving life. The life that has been cruelly taken way from her, and all of us.
May her murderer rot in hell. May the rest of us remember Ann for what she was. The best of British.
Iain Dale presents the Evening Show on LBC Radio. His autobiography Have I Said Too Much? is published next week.
