‘Duty howled’

We could all forget about Ann Widdecombe for the past nine years while she was doing Strictly Come Dancing and panto and Celebrity Big Brother and the rest. But now she has risen from the political grave to become a Brexit MEP. Tragically, it has meant cancelling her Christmas panto booking as Chop Suey in Aladdin, which she was hugely looking forward to, but ‘Duty didn’t just call,’ she says, ‘it positively howled.’ So now she is playing Chop Suey to Nigel Farage’s Aladdin.

They certainly made an eye-catching entrance to their first plenary session in Strasbourg, turning their backs on parliament while the ‘Ode to Joy’ was played. And then Widdecombe delivered her great tirade about how Britain leaving the EU was like ‘people turning on their oppressors — slaves against their owners’. She spoke entirely off the cuff (‘It was only 90 minutes, Lynn’) and concluded ‘Nous allons. Wir gehen.