The 72-year-old former minister – a lifelong Conservative until she joined the Brexit Party – said she was “very proud” of her return to frontline politics. The Daily Express columnist joined Nigel Farage’s grassroots movement after Theresa May’s government failed to take the country out of the European Union on March 29. Yesterday, Ms Widdecombe brought the curtain down on Brexit as MEPs approved the UK’s EU Withdrawal Agreement in Brussels.

Reflecting on the moment, she told Express.co.uk: “It’s a mixture of elation and sheer relief.”

Having finally helped take us out of the EU, Ms Widdecombe, who served as Shadow Health Secretary between 1998-1998 and Shadow Home Secretary between 1999-2001, placed the moment as the “greatest” in her political career.

She added: “I think it may well be. There was obviously things I was closely involved in at Westminster, both on a small and large scale that I was very proud of, but I think it’s probably true to say, ‘why did I come back into politics last year?’

“I came back to get Brexit done and we have got Brexit done,” she said.

Having joined up with Mr Farage’s Brexit Party, Ms Widdecombe went on to win a seat as the MEP for the South West and Gibraltar, where she lives, in the European Parliament elections on May 23.

The veteran politician captured the limelight with her maiden speech after her election last July, in which she accused the EU of being “oppressors” and Britain was “glad to be leaving”, but she reserves the most praise for her new party’s leader.

Mr Farage should be held in the same regard as former prime ministers Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher despite never holding the country’s highest office, Ms Widdecombe believes.

She said: “The fact is that Nigel Farage is quite extraordinary because he’s done it all from outside Parliament.

“He hasn’t been prime minister, he hasn’t even been an MP.

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“And yet from outside Parliament, he has changed the course of this country’s history and I think future historians will rate him very differently from contemporary commentators.”

Ms Widdecombe will bow out of Brussels tomorrow morning as she leads her Brexit Party colleagues back to London.

They’ll be all “letting off steam” at parties across London, including the main gathering in Parliament Square, to celebrate our freedom.

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But for Ms Widdecombe, Brexit isn’t an end to her lifetime of political work as she insists that she is not ready to retire just yet.

She concluded: “I will stay involved with the Brexit Party for so long as Boris is negotiating with the EU, because someone has got to hold him to account.”

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