I was fourteen, I think, when I first met Ann Widdecombe.
At the time I had no great political sensibilities and no fully formed opinions on politics, bar those I suspect I absorbed from the adults around me, rather than thinking myself.
My mother and step father ran a small fruit farm in Kent, and Anne was our local MP. There was a garden party they were invited to, as was she, and during the course of it, being young and a bit out of place – a little bored I suspect – I decided to go up and talk to her.
I’m not going to claim I learned everything I’m about to say in that one conversation but I didn’t forget that meeting, and more astonishingly neither did she.
Ann liked children. It didn’t really fit with her public image at the time but she did. She had her own too. Oh yes, I know the public perception of her private life, which was rather disgracefully outlined by Adam Boulton last week, in comments he later rightly apologised for.
However she had her own version of children, her cats, upon which she doted. She may never have had human children, but she liked other people’s, nonetheless. She mentored a few too.
It was, no doubt of it, a surprise to many given the stern, strident headmistress-like persona she had in public life, that she was, privately, immensely kind and gentle. Many times over the years when we talked, as we both grew older, there was almost a fragility that you couldn’t help but want to protect.
That’s why the manner of her death is so awful. The police investigation continues with the release of an initial suspect who is no longer part of their inquiry and the arrest of a 28 year old from Yorkshire. I won’t comment further on the case, but do go back to something the police have said more than once, that at the moment they don’t see any political motive for her killing.
I think it’s beholden on all of us, to note that – unless it emerges otherwise later, which must remain a possibility – because it would be a singular mark of disrespect to her use this tragedy for any political purpose, if it had nothing to do with her politics.
Sadly I’m not sure that’s going to be the case.
Her politics was her passion, and principles her guide. Her faith sustained her as much as her fervour for debate. You might disagree or even dislike her stand point but you not only knew exactly where she stood but could respect that she wasn’t going to waiver and drift as the times and mood suited.
I bumped into her at Westminster tube in 2004, when I had first arrived at the BBC’s Westminster operation as a reporter for what was then “The Daily Politics” programme on BBC2. Oddly a few days before I had bumped into Michael Portillo in the exact same place – I think to the same spot – and asked if I might add him to me very thin political contacts book.
Anne was more than happy to do that, as by then she knew me by face and name, asking after my parents every time and often remembering details of my life I did not realistically expect her to retain: How’s University going? So you got a job in journalism, that’s great news? How’s your wife? Delighted to hear you’ve had a child. The stuff that makes you feel someone actually cares to know.
She surprised me though on that occasion in the Tube station. No, she would not be able to help me beyond a sounding board or giving me her considered opinion because she felt on principle she couldn’t speak to my programme. I was shocked and disappointed, but had to ask why?
She had decided she couldn’t assist my overall Editor because he had reneged on a contract. One of Ann’s first forays into television as more than just a politician was on the programme Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott had made their own called ‘This Week.’ This was our sister show, and shared a production team.
It had not started as the Michael and Diane show. There had briefly been other combinations, and one was Ann Widdecombe and Claire Short. Abbott and Portillo had a ring to it, and they had the sort of on-screen chemistry that great TV is made of.
Short and Widdecombe did not. Not because individually they lacked charisma or presence but it was obvious they couldn’t bear each other!
You’d have needed an enormous sofa for them to have sat comfortably apart, as it was, they sat as far as they could get from one another. The negative vibe was not entertaining just awkward. They were dropped as a team and Ann was upset on principle that a deal had been broken.
She did relent after a few years and she started to come in as a guest on the Daily Politics. I often collected her from the BBC reception just as an excuse to say hello and that she got a known friendly face to greet her when she was on.
On one occasion we rounded a corner towards the studio ‘green room’ when the loud voice of one of the programme producers announced, “Can we get the Labour guest into the studio please, and where the hell is the Widdy-Biddy!?”
I was embarrassed. Ann didn’t miss a beat, and looked at me.
“I’ve been called worse” and walked purposefully to the studio to give her usual confident and strong opinion.
That she developed a far bigger role in Television was testament to her desire to share her opinions but to reveal that she didn’t take herself overly seriously. How else could you explain her oddly successful outing on Strictly Come Dancing?
She took her politics very seriously, but not entirely herself. A dry sense of humour was something that made her good to know.
I have a great deal of time for Lord Howard, but Ann’s withering line that he had ‘something of the night about him‘, was mud, she probably shouldn’t have flung, but stuck hard. As I’m afraid did the brutal and similar jibe at her, that she was ‘Doris Karloff’, she I think held the view that if you are going to dish it, you should probably be able to take it.
And just as her private persona was more revealed by her television work, her political persona was eventually viewed more kindly.
After all, some of the things that had defined her as a minister weren’t actually true. She did not, as it happens, advocate the handcuffing of female prisoners during childbirth. She may have been strong on immigration control, how ironic that that should have been thought harsh at the time, but as I came to see myself when I had a hand in trying to tackle it, that drive, that Chris Philp has written about for ConHome today, did not and does come from bigotry or racism, nor punching down or cruelty. It is because of the problems it causes domestically you cannot simply allow it to run out of hand. The ‘Boris wave’ as it is called looked like we didn’t care. Tackling it, and we started to, wasn’t our success but clearing up our own mess.
I saw less of Ann when she left the party to become an MEP, with the Brexit Party, and later a spokesperson for Reform UK. It wasn’t because she’d done that, I don’t really work like that, but because she simply wasn’t in the same sorts of places I’d bump into her, but I did see her from time to time, and she never stopped being kind and interested. Actually she never stopped being kind and interesting.
I will genuinely miss her and feel we have lost a great personality in the most horrible circumstances. She will be remembered by many more than just me, but my memories of her will be fond ones. I think she more than deserves that.