Ann Widdecombe stands for Farage's Brexit party in European elections

Lifelong conservative Ann Widdecombe has returned to frontline politics to stand as a candidate in Nigel Farage’s Brexit party in the European elections.

The former minister said the government’s failure to get the UK out of the EU has forced her to put her retirement on hold and fight to ensure that Brexit happens.

Widdecombe, who served as a Conservative MP for more than two decades, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “Britain is an international laughing stock, parliament is a parody. The whole thing is making the electorate very fed up and everybody, both leavers and remainers, are saying get it done. Just stop messing about.”

The 71-year-old added: “What needs to happen in these European elections is for us to send a seismic shock to both major parties in the Labour heartlands and in the Conservative shires, saying the electorate has had enough, now we said what we wanted to do, just get it done and over.”

Widdecombe recently described Theresa May as the worst prime minister since Sir Anthony Eden, who led Britain into the Suez crisis in 1956. Widdecombe insisted it was the duty of MPs put the interest of the country first and accused Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, of playing a cynical game.

She said: “In these circumstances, the national good comes first – that’s what everybody out there is saying and what the cloth ears in parliament are just not hearing. It’s the national good which comes first.”

The former shadow home secretary said she hoped Farage’s new party would “sweep to victory” and send a clear message to her old party and Labour.

Writing in the Daily Express, she said: “I really thought my time in politics was over and done with but I felt compelled to step up. I will be voting Conservative in the local elections and I remain a member of the party but when Central Office reads this I expect they will kick me out. And if that happens, then so be it.”

As well as Farage’s new party, Change UK, formerly known as the Independent Group, launched its European election campaign in Bristol on Tuesday. The anti-Brexit party revealed a slate of 70 candidates that includes Rachel Johnson, Boris Johnson’s sister, the former BBC correspondent Gavin Esler, and Victoria Groulef, a former Labour councillor in Buckinghamshire.