Somebody told me on Thursday, July 9, that Ann Widdecombe, a former Conservative British MP, had died. It was not yet publicly reported, so I did not want to believe him. By Friday, July 10, though, it was news everywhere. Police now suspect she may have been murdered and have launched an investigation into her death, a really unfortunate turn for what was already tragic news. Ann Widdecombe was a firebrand politician who was unafraid of sticking to her convictions. She was never one to shy away from controversy. She was among the few British MPs to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act, a piece of legislation that has since committed the British economy to moribund energy policies and an unrelenting drive toward decarbonization.
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Her faith was never a private matter kept neatly apart from her public life. She left the Church of England over its decision to ordain women, a move she regarded as a departure from scripture and tradition rather than a mere administrative reform, and she found her spiritual home instead in the Roman Catholic Church. That conversion said much about her. Ann never adjusted her beliefs to suit the prevailing mood of an institution. If the institution moved away from what she believed to be true, she was the one who moved—not her convictions.
Free speech was another cause she refused to abandon, even as it became fashionable in certain circles to demand protection from words rather than from harm. Ann believed that liberty had to be defended in practice and not merely praised in principle, and she held that nobody possessed a right to be shielded from speech simply because they found it offensive. It was a position that put her at odds with a culture increasingly inclined to treat discomfort as a form of injury, but she held it regardless.
When many were praising the sensational #MeToo movement, Ann was not afraid to criticize women who had chosen to consort with lecherous men, only to claim victimhood later, once the movement became fashionable. Nor was she unwilling to criticize the welfare state, calling out benefit claimants whom she considered simply work-shy. On immigration, she was similarly tough, often arguing on GB News that immigrants should have skills in fields only where Britain genuinely faced shortages.
Her views on sexuality were conservative, and she was candid about them at a time when candor on the subject invited real consequences. She defended traditional marriage and traditional teachings on sexual morality, and she took a great deal of flak for it, much of it bitter and personal. She never seemed to flinch. That, in the end, was precisely why so many of us loved her. She was a principled woman in an age that increasingly rewarded the unprincipled, and she never once traded her convictions for an easier reception.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Ann felt that university ought to serve a minority of the population and that encouraging too many students to attend had only lowered academic standards. She stood firmly against grade inflation and had no patience for what she saw as the proliferation of Mickey Mouse degrees. She was unrelenting in her support for Brexit and for the Reform Party, and she remained openly Christian at a time when to do so was far from fashionable.
In an age of irresolute politicians, Widdecombe stood out as a beacon of light. Americans, in a sense, possess their own Ann Widdecombe in Donald Trump, and I can only hope he continues undeterred in his convictions, never becoming a slave to the fleeting sentiments of the political wind.
There was something deeply alluring about her courage. It was her unwavering conviction that made Ann the political love of my life.
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