Brexit Party candidate Anne Widdecombe's views on gay marriage, women's rights, and her cats

Anne Widdecombe, now of the Brexit Party, with Nigel Farage. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire - Credit: PA

We put together a refresher on one of the Brexit Party’s most prominent candidates, Anne Widdecombe, and found a brilliant reason why you should vote for her.

The Brexit Party’s policies, what could they be? With Farage declining to release any sort of manifesto prior to the EU elections, it’s anybody’s guess what the party stands for.

READ MORE: Nigel Farage REFUSES to publish a Brexit Party manifesto until after EU electionsIn case you are concerned that the Brexit Party vote could usher in a new era of equality, tolerance and progressive milestones, there’s Anne Widdecombe’s record to look over.

• Gatekeeper of valid lifestyles

Far be it for us to judge or even speculate about Widdecombe’s lifestyle, she is very much the self-appointed arbiter of gay and unmarried ‘lifestyles’, having stated in a 1999 BBC Q&A that they are not as valid as good old married heterosexuality.

The state’s preferred marital union should be of the type that is ‘generally open to reproduction’, the member of the party of small government told The Guardian in 2014, and in 2012 she voiced support for gay conversion therapy in an Express article titled ‘Helping those who aren’t glad to be gay’. Thoughtful.

• Left the Anglican church because women could be ordained as priests

This watershed moment that allowed women to operate equally to men in matters of faith was, said Widdecombe, telling The New Statesman in 2010 that this was the final straw that led her to run terrified towards the Catholic church.

• Climate change denied via the ‘but it’s warm out’ test

Widdecombe has not always dismissed climate change outright, but is still one of the lonely five MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act in 2008.

In 2009, horrified at the prospect of tyrannical objects like energy-saving light bulbs, it was time to double down with a strong scientific argument: ‘There is no climate change, hasn’t anybody looked out of their window recently?’ she slam-dunked in a blistering Daily Express polemic, instantly enlightening the global scientific consensus.

• Very much against zygote and foetus death

Widdecombe was quietly barred by her own party from ever becoming Health Secretary while the ministry handled abortions, lest she came for her fellow women’s right to choose.

Far from being against abortion by religious default, she said in a BBC Q&A that she had come to this view as an issue of ‘taking life’ while she was agnostic.

• But fine with THAT kind of taking life

Perhaps confusingly though, Widdecombe doesn’t consider the death penalty a problem, perhaps unaware that this is very much an issue of ‘taking life’.

In the same Q&A, she put this down to it being ok because ‘every country has a choice to kill in its own defence’, as though murderers generally set out to kill the entire UK.

• Refused to disclose her MPs’ expenses

Which was a bit stupid, because she, unlike many others, came out totally clean and was listed an expenses ‘saint’ by The Telegraph in 2009.

Not before she’d contributed to the obstruction of clearly valid public information and sending The Telegraph on a full-blown investigation, though.

• Writes poems to her cats

An entire sub-section of her website is devoted to her cats, including a 650-word article, photographs and two poems.

This is objectively and incontrovertibly brilliant.

For this reason and this reason alone you should vote for Widdecombe – if you prefer cats to gay people, women, preventing global climate catastrophe, and not killing people. It’s a tough one.