Ann Widdecombe, a former Conservative minister who defected to Reform UK, has died aged 78.

She was a household name even before she reinvented herself as a reality TV star, with a high profile spell on Strictly Come Dancing, known for her forthright views and no-nonsense attitude.

A leading figure on the right of British politics for decades, and an enthusiastic early backer of Brexit, she signed up for Strictly in 2010, shortly after leaving Parliament, having represented the Kent constituency of Maidstone for more than 20 years.

Not the most polished dancer – she described her own moves as “galumphing” – she made it to the semi-final before being knocked out.

Her appearance kick started a showbiz career which also saw her take part in Celebrity Big Brother and star in panto as the Evil Queen in Snow White.

Her long-term friend broadcaster Gyles Brandreth described her as a “curious mix of Danny DeVito and Margaret Rutherford”.

Widdecombe was born in Bath, Somerset, in 1947 and went on to study Latin at Birmingham University, then Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, before being elected as a Runnymede District councillor.

She was a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship and held staunchly socially conservative views, opposing abortion, assisted dying and gay rights and supporting the reintroduction of the death penalty.

First elected as an MP in 1987, she faced cruel comments about her appearance, with one newspaper calling her “Doris Karloff” – a reference to old Hollywood horror star, Boris Karloff.

But she brushed off the barbs, saying: “I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell.”

She was also not shy of criticising her Conservative colleagues, famously describing Michael Howard as having “something of the night about him”.

Despite being one of the few female MPs in Parliament in the 1980s, she had little time for feminists, describing them as “whingers”.

Reflecting on her political career in 2016, she said: “I never went round looking for problems so I never found them. The only problem I found as a woman MP were there were insufficient loos.”

A keen-animal lover, she was also one of the few Conservative MPs who opposed fox-hunting.

Her devotion to animals led to her setting up a section of of her website, the Widdyweb, for the pet cats she has lived with, adopting goats and becoming the patron of a donkey sanctuary.

Three years after becoming an MP, she got a foot on the ministerial ladder as a junior social security minister and was then promoted to the employment brief.

In 1995, she was promoted to prisons minister, where she got into a row after defending a policy of chaining pregnant prisoners to prevent them from escaping.

Following the 1997 Labour landslide, she served under William Hague as shadow health secretary between 1998-1999 and shadow home secretary between 1999 – 2001.

When she retired from politics in 2010, she was disappointed not to have been offered a place in the House of Lords by David Cameron.

Widdecombe continued writing, publishing four fiction novels and an autobiography, and made many broadcast appearances, including as a guest host of news quiz Have I Got News for You.

In 2013, she was awarded a papal honour, as Dame of the Order of St Gregory, for her services to politics and public life, particularly her opposition to abortion and assisted dying.

She had converted to Catholicism in the 1990s, telling The Times: “To have a church which calls a sin a sin and has done with it is a blessed relief.”

She returned to politics as a prominent Brexit campaigner, winning a seat as a Brexit Party MEP for South West England in the 2019 European Parliament election, until the UK left the EU at the end of January 2020.

Widdecombe re-joined the party, which had been renamed Reform UK, in 2023 as their immigration and justice spokesperson.

She shared her home in London with her widowed mother, Rita, until her death in 2007.

Speaking to the BBC’s Woman’s Hour in 2010, she said that being an MP could be lonely but that she was able to cope with it.

“I like my own company very much indeed, just as well because I might be the only one who does,” she joked.

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