WI: Ann Widdecombe elected Tory leader in 2001

She runs in 2001 as the Tory Right's standard bearer, and defeats Kenneth Clarke in the final round.

How would she have done as leader?
 

Thande

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Widdecombe could have been an effective Conservative leader if she'd gotten into Parliament earlier, but they had a tendency to run her in seats the Tories were never going to win (deliberately or not, I don't know).
 
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The 2005 election leads to the Conservatives coming third both in terms of votes and seats.
 
She's going to get hammered. She came to speak at my school in 2005 and she's a great rabble rouser and actually very good on the stump but she's not attractive enough and right wing in all the wrong ways.
 
She runs in 2001 as the Tory Right's standard bearer, and defeats Kenneth Clarke in the final round.

How would she have done as leader?

Anne Widdecombe....
2002 --- Anne goes on the stump as opposition and is seen as "Plump and Dowdy" The Tories' numbers fall
2003 --- "Operation Anne Widdecombe Peel"
Widdecombe goes on "Celebrity Fit Club", loses 66 pounds enroute to dropping nearly 100.
She also does a turn on "What Not To Wear" with he newly Aerobicized-GirlPower body. Anne goes from Dowdy to WOW!
Her confidence is up, and so are the Tories, who win 4 by-elections in 2003
2004, the big set up year. The healthy, confident Widdecombe is sharp in question time and gaining traction to regain the disaffected citizens still pining for strong Thatcher-style leadership. Some begin to think, Widdecombe could be the one.

Election Night 2005

"The Swingometer showing a huge thrust back to the blue tonight , and you can see all those Conservatives seats lost returning to the blue fold. Hard to believe when Anne Widdecombe was named Conservative leader that you would see a very different leader in 2005, but Anne made her swing, the Tories got their swing and now 10 Downing swings back to the Tories."

"Our BBC Projections confirm the Conservatives will have a 37-seat majority in the next Commons in a huge comeback. Two years ago, the Tories dropped to third in the polls, but a change in image by their leader led to a sterling return to Blue in power."
 
This is Chatbait, but odds are Australia is going to elect a PM next year who's a rougher, testosterone-infused version of the 'Opus Dei'-intelligentsia archetype that I think Widdecombe represents.
 
This is Chatbait, but odds are Australia is going to elect a PM next year who's a rougher, testosterone-infused version of the 'Opus Dei'-intelligentsia archetype that I think Widdecombe represents.

Actually I think you're wrong there. Anne Widdecombe as her career attests could not shut up about her religious and social views to get ahead. Since becoming Liberal leader Abbott has shut up about his views. Time will tell how he'll behave when in office but as an Opposition Leader he isn't banging on about "moral decline" and "godlessness".
 
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Actually I think you're wrong there. Anne Widdecombe as her career attests could not shut up about her religious and social views to get ahead. Since becoming Liberal leader Abbott has shut up about his views. Time will tell how he'll behave when in office but as an Opposition Leader he isn't banging on a about "moral decline" and "godlessness".

The Pope today refused to back down from his controversial remarks regarding the 'godlessness' of educating children about contraception.

Tony Abbott responded by calling for a federal election.
 
Actually I think you're wrong there. Anne Widdecombe as her career attests could not shut up about her religious and social views to get ahead. Since becoming Liberal leader Abbott has shut up about his views. Time will tell how he'll behave when in office but as an Opposition Leader he isn't banging on about "moral decline" and "godlessness".

Yes, I guess Abbott isn't as explicit in his religious moralising as she was, but he does have a strong ideological warfare element underlying a surprising amount of what he says.

So, for the purposes of the Widdecombe analogy, to be like Abbott she has to drop not only the puritanical stuff but even the more secular 'back to basics' rhetoric, and yet concentrate on being aggressive towards a more abstract reading of the teh Left than perhaps even Thatcher was.

(I stand by my concept of them both coming from the same cultural/intellectual mould.)
 
Oh I agree they are coming from a similar place but there are so very big differences. Abbott is a brawler, a head kicker, that's working very well in Australian politics atm but Ann Widdecombe not only couldn't emulate it but considering her personal attributes and the British political climate wouldn't want to. Australia and the UK are very similar but they are not the same.
 
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