Ann Widdecombe – long may she harrumph

In February Niall McCrae reported on Trinity Mirror’s intended purchase of Express and Star Newspapers (a deal now under investigation by Ofcom). Niall’s article carried the headline ‘Don’t meddle with the doughty Express’  – an exhortation which, by adding three extra words, can usefully be adapted to: ‘Don’t meddle with the doughty Express columnist Ann Widdecombe’.

The woman who is accorded a full page each Wednesday was described by Niall as ‘irretrievably unfashionable’. Which is masterful understatement: with the exception of her implacable opposition to foxhunting, whatever the social issue, Ann Widdecombe can be relied upon vigorously to espouse a politically incorrect opinion.

[…]  Leaving aside the non-story of Prince Charles not having seen his new grandson, Ann hit her stride by describing the coverage of Ruth Davidson’s pregnancy as ‘emotional goo . . . I hope the birth is straightforward and that the child has a happy life but I nevertheless have reservations about deliberately bringing a fatherless child into the world’.

Announcing that she is with child, Scottish Tory leader Davidson had stated: ‘It’s important people realise that [same-sex couples having children] happens and it’s completely normal’. Hmm.

In truth, unless Ruth Davidson and partner Jen Wilson have re-written the laws of biology, even in 2018 the artificial impregnation of one half of a lesbian couple cannot be labelled ‘normal’. Not that anyone would have known it from media coverage that generally gushed at this delightfully modern arrangement while also seeming oddly incurious regarding pertinent details, such as whether the ‘father’ is someone known to the couple or an anonymous donor.

Nor, as might have been expected, did this high-profile story spark any conspicuous debate over the morality of deliberately creating a fatherless child. Ann Widdecombe, though, is no doubt: ‘To design it that way seems wrong. Every child deserves a mummy and a daddy and I do not care tuppence how politically incorrect that makes me.’

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