comment is thought to have contributed to failure of Howard's 1997 campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, a sentiment shared by both Howard himself and Widdecombe. It led to him being caricatured as a vampire, in part due to his Romanian ancestry. Extract from Crick's book In search of Michael Howard. Howard became the official party leader in 2003, and Widdecombe then stated, "I explained fully what my objections were in 1997 and I do not retract anything I said then. But ... we have to look to the future and not the past." In 2001, when Michael Portillo was running for leader of the Conservative Party, Widdecombe described him and his allies as "backbiters" due to his alleged destabilising influence under Hague. She went on to say that, should he be appointed leader, she would never give him her allegiance. This was amidst a homophobic campaign led by socially conservative critics of Portillo. In 2009, she partially defended Carol Thatcher's use of the racial slur golliwog on Any Questions?, saying: "There is a generation to whom a golliwog is merely a toy, a generation which was much endeared by its golliwogs which grew up with them on jam jars ... and there is a generation, a new generation for whom that word is deeply offensive and one does have to make I think some allowance for the fact." In December 2019, leaked WhatsApp conversations to the Plymouth Herald between her and Brexit Party activists showed Widdecombe using the term amid rumours BP campaign funding was being diverted away from Plymouth ahead of the general election of that year. Referring to throwing of one's toys out of the pram, Widdecombe said: "Yes, I threw all my toys of the pram. Bears and gollywogs flying everywhere!!". In 2019 Widdecombe defended the comments she made in a 2012 article that supported "gay conversion" therapy. She told Sky News that science may yet "provide an answer" to the question of whether people can "switch sexuality". Following Widdecombe's apparent endorsement of conversion therapy, at least one venue, the Landmark theatre in Ilfracombe, Devon, cancelled a performance of her one-woman show. Widdecombe and two other Brexit Party figures were criticised for previous appearances on the David Icke-affiliated Richie Allen Show, which has been accused of promoting Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family and Zionism. Widdecombe appeared three times between August 2017