Ann Widdecombe’s final interview was recorded roughly twenty minutes before police believe she was killed inside her home on Dartmoor.

She spent it defending Nigel Farage.

The Interview That Was Never Broadcast

The footage, never aired at the time, has now been released to Times Radio with the permission of Widdecombe’s family.

It captures the former Conservative minister in characteristic form — combative, articulate, and entirely unbothered by controversy.

She used the appearance to back Farage’s decision to call a by-election in Clacton after criticism over his failure to declare a £5 million “gift” from a cryptocurrency billionaire. Farage has maintained the donation was a private gift received before he entered Parliament.

Widdecombe went further, framing the investigations into his finances as part of what she called the politics of personal destruction.

“There has been a game now for a very long time,” she said, “a game of personal destruction, not just for Nigel, for lots and lots of politicians that face this.”

The Timeline

The precision of the timeline is what makes it so unsettling.

Widdecombe joined a Zoom call with TWR-UK, a Christian speech radio station, at 11:54 a.m. last Wednesday. The interview ended just after 12:10 p.m. The recording concluded normally, with interviewer and guest thanking one another.

She then exchanged WhatsApp messages with a producer on Channel 5’s Matt Allwright show between 12:14 and 12:19 p.m.

Then she stopped replying.

A read receipt confirmed she opened a message sent at 12:19 p.m. She never opened any that followed. A message sent at 12:48 p.m. went unread. Repeated calls went unanswered.

Devon and Cornwall Police believe Widdecombe was murdered inside her secluded home in Haytor, Dartmoor, at around 12:30 p.m.

A Terrorism Investigation

The case has escalated dramatically.

Counterterrorism police took charge of the inquiry on Monday after detectives uncovered what they described as new information and evidence. The death is now being treated as politically motivated.

A 28-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder at his home in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, on Saturday night was re-arrested Monday on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.

Farage has laid flowers near her home at Dartmoor National Park and is expected to meet security experts.

What She Said About the Standards System

Widdecombe’s criticism of parliamentary oversight was blistering.

She questioned the drawn-out nature of the investigations into Farage, noting that as soon as he answered to the standards committee on one matter, another emerged — again concerning a period before he became an MP, when he was not even an active politician.

Her interpretation of his thinking: he had reached a point of asking where it would end, and decided to force the issue by putting it to voters.

She then turned on the register of members’ interests, calling it a joke.

The register, she argued, had once been a serious instrument requiring declaration of anything that might influence how an MP votes. It had, in her view, drifted far from that purpose — becoming a game in which people hunt for things you might not have declared, or decided you did not need to declare.

Her respect for the standards committee, she said, collapsed when it changed the rules mid-investigation into Boris Johnson.

The original standard was that an MP must not knowingly mislead Parliament — a principle she said everyone could accept. Then it changed. Whether you knew or not became irrelevant; supplying wrong information alone made you guilty. She called that absolute nonsense.

Why She Backed Farage

Asked what drew her to him, Widdecombe pointed to his leadership and decisiveness.

She had defected to Reform UK in the final years of her life, and remained an unapologetic advocate.

The Woman Off Air

The interviewer, James Maidment-Fullard, offered a portrait that sat somewhat at odds with her public reputation.

She was a passionate interviewee, he said, but off air she was incredibly kind and compassionate. Just before he pressed record on that final interview, she asked how his family was doing — a small detail that stayed with him as evidence she genuinely cared about whoever she was talking to.

He said he had informed police of the recording’s existence, but that they had not requested it.

Faith at the Center

Maidment-Fullard had interviewed Widdecombe across a wide range of subjects, but said the conversations that lingered were about the persecuted church, the sanctity of life, and the role of Christian conviction in public life.

Forthright and articulate on air, she was equally sincere and open about her faith off it.

He was convinced, he said, that had she ever faced a choice between politics and her relationship with Jesus, she would have chosen Jesus every time — because that faith was the anchor of her life and shaped how she saw the world.

The Final Word

There is something almost unbearable about the ordinariness of those last minutes: a routine interview, a polite exchange of thanks, a few WhatsApp messages, a read receipt at 12:19 p.m.

And then nothing.