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Anne Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister who defected to Reform UK, has died aged 78.
Even before she reinvented herself as a reality TV star, she was a household name, known for her straight-talking and no-nonsense attitude as a high-profile figure on Strictly Come Dancing.
A leader on the right-wing of British politics for decades and an early supporter of Britain, she signed up for Strictly in 2010, after leaving Parliament to represent the Maidstone region of Kent for more than 20 years.
Not the most polished dancer – she described her own moves as “exciting” – she made it to the semi-finals before falling.
Her breakthrough career in showbiz began when she took part in Celebrity Big Brother and starred in panto as the Evil Queen in Snow White.
Widdecombe He was born in Bath, Somerset in 1947 and studied Latin at Birmingham University, then philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University before being elected as a Runnymede Borough Councillor.
She was a member of the Conservative Christian Union and held strong social conservative views, opposing abortion, supporting gay and lesbian rights, and supporting the reinstatement of the death penalty.
In the year Elected to parliament for the first time in 1987, she faced cruel comments about her looks, with one newspaper calling her “Doris Karloff” – a reference to an old Hollywood horror star.
But she dropped the barbs, “I’m toothy, angry, ugly, overweight, spindly—what the hell.”
She has not been shy about criticizing current home secretary Michael Howard, saying he has “something of the night about him”.
In the year Although she was one of the few female MPs in Parliament in the 1980s, she did not have much time for feminists, whom she described as “veterans”.
In the year Reflecting on her political career in 2016, she said, “I never went looking for problems so I never found them. The only problem I found as a woman MP was enough lots.”
Her favorite animal, she was one of the few Conservative MPs to oppose fox hunting.
Her devotion to animals has led her to dedicate a section of her website, widdweb, to the pet cats she has lived with, raising goats and being the keeper of a donkey sanctuary.
