A National Treasure?
Ann Widdecombe is the sort of politician who polarises public opinion and divides the media. To some she embodies the best of British, a leading politician bravely speaking her mind in an age of spin; to others, Widdecombe is seen as little more than a national joke, better known for her party-dividing remarks about the two Michaels - Howard and Portillo - and the disturbing results of her makeover on Richard and Judy, than for any positive achievement. When she came to Oxford to address the Union last Friday lunchtime, therefore, it was the perfect chance to try to get to the bottom of which view best reflects the real Ms Widdecombe. After speaking to an almost full debating chamber, she spoke to the Oxford Student about her own career, and her views on the state of her party under a new leader whom she did not support in last summer's elections.
A former Secretary and Treasurer of the Oxford Union, Ann Widdecombe appreciates the training it gave her in preparing her for "real-life politics". However, the lessons she learned were perhaps not those the Union itself aims to teach; she found it most useful "as a taste for all the manoeuvrings and alliance-making and factions and compromises and deals, and all of the miserable stuff that goes on behind the scenes". However, she still doesn't seem to have developed the knack of backing a political winner: when I ask her whether she is an enthusiastic supporter of Iain Duncan Smith, despite supporting Ken Clarke last summer, she explains that this is not a problem as "I didn't support John Major, I supported Douglas Hurd, and I didn't support William Hague, I supported Ken Clarke then as well".
Widdecombe does appear, however, to be genuinely optimistic about the prospects for her party under its new leader. There is something reminiscent of her days as a schoolmistress writing half-yearly reports in the way she cautiously praises the first months of Duncan Smith's leadership, saying "I think he's doing extremely well at the moment. He will have to maintain it. He's getting to grips with a lot of very difficult things and he's taking the party with him, and that's got to be good". One gets the feeling that as long as Portillo didn't get the job, Widdecombe was going to be satisfied enough, but Duncan Smith has certainly lived up to her expectations thus far. Then again, she did spend the first four months of last year confidently asserting that William Hague was going to be the next Prime Minister, so perhaps we shouldn't take this as meaning that the Tories have got the next election in the bag just yet.
However, the key to understanding Ann Widdecombe is not to be found through an examination of her relationships with the other heavyweights in the Tory party, as interesting as this may be to the tabloid press and, indeed, the broadsheets. Widdecombe stands out among today's politicians less because of her views than because of the way she expresses them. She professes to have no time for 'spin', believing that it is the politician's duty to "say things people don't want to hear, rather than spin the message that everybody wants". After all, "there's no such thing as a policy without a downside", she says. Although it is admittedly one thing to admit this in theory and quite another to apply it to one's own policies, Widdecombe does have a track record for telling it as she sees it. When talking about the 2001 Election defeat, for example, she admits partial responsibility for the defeat and realises that the Conservatives did not get across their policies on public services to an electorate desperate for improvement in them. Moreover, she is strikingly blunt when asked whether Hague's leadership saw the Tory party make progress in any way from the mess they found themselves in in 1997: "Let's be brutally honest about it. Progress in politics is only worth having if you're actually winning seats".
This is a woman not afraid to admit her mistakes, and one who is able to take with good humour the swings and roundabouts of political life. She has a wall in her cottage - which is shown on the fantastically bizarre 'Widdy Web', Widdecombe's personal website - dedicated to cartoons of herself. "If you haven't got a sense of humour you're destined to have a pretty rotten time in politics", she says, although this is perhaps slightly contradicted by her claim that "Tony Blair certainly has no sense of humour against himself". One is tempted to suggest that perhaps Mr Blair has had a happier time in politics over the last twelve months than Miss Widdecombe.
Nevertheless, Widdecombe's performance in the debating chamber demonstrated that she is more than willing to take on her opponents while retaining a self-deprecating sense of humour: when her mobile phone rang repeatedly throughout the event, she quipped, "it's probably Iain Duncan Smith to tell me I'm now the ex-member for Maidstone and the Weald".
After spending some time talking with Ann Widdecombe, I came to the unexpected opinion that I actually quite liked her. Putting aside her political views for a moment, this is clearly a woman of principle in a job where that quality is becoming increasingly rare. In an attempt to convince me to vote Conservative next time round, she says, "This government has not delivered. We will deliver. We will have completely fresh policies, they will be realistic policies, and they will be honestly sold". Whether you believe this or not depends to a large extent on your view of the Tory party as a whole; but it is at least clear that Widdecombe herself believes it wholeheartedly. Perhaps the best indicator of her worth, in an age when politics is being seen as increasingly irrelevant by many, is that she managed to provide a thoroughly entertaining hour at the Union both for her supporters and for some vociferous opponents. A few more politicians like Ann Widdecombe on either side of the political divide may go a long way to solving the problem of voter apathy. As that wise man Louis Theroux once said, "The world's a more interesting place for having her around".
<ul><li><a href="http://www.annwiddecombemp.com/">Visit the 'Widdy Web'</a></li></ul>
31st Jan 2002