ANDREW PIERCE: How did utterly deluded ‘Penny Dormant’ ever see herself as a serious contender?
Right to the very end Penny Mordaunt was in denial. It had long been clear to Westminster watchers that she had no chance of acquiring the 100 nominations needed from her fellow MPs to take her into a run-off against Rishi Sunak for the Tory leadership, but she stubbornly refused to concede.
By contrast Boris Johnson, the darling of the Conservative faithful, in a remarkable act of magnanimity quit the race on Sunday evening for the good of both the country and his party.
No such high-minded considerations cut any ice with Mordaunt. The woman named after a Royal Navy cruiser ‘HMS Penelope’ sailed blithely on. As late as yesterday morning, she was rejecting repeated appeals in private from all wings of the party to throw in the towel before theatrically conceding defeat only minutes before the 2pm deadline.
And while her supporters claimed she had around 90 backers, agonisingly close to the 100 threshold, they were unable to provide the proof that she had attracted anything like that number.
At 1pm only 27 MPs had confirmed their support and even that figure dropped when George Freeman, a former junior minister, switched to Sunak. Still Mordaunt refused to give up.
‘Penny Mordaunt is not without attributes. Unlike Liz Truss, the woman who went into the contest as Leader of the Commons is a good communicator, who’s quick on her feet in the chamber’
Some say that the ambitious 49-year-old took her campaign to the wire – despite the palpable irritation her obstinacy was creating in the Sunak camp – in a desperate effort to secure a more senior role in the new PM’s Cabinet.
But a number of Tory MPs told me Mordaunt had convinced herself that if she made it on to the ballot paper she would win the vote of Tory party members who would decide the issue in an online ballot if two candidates were left in the frame.
This was a laughable assertion, again without a shred of evidence to back it up, and further evidence Penny Mordaunt was utterly deluded about her prospects and abilities.
So how did a minister whose most senior Cabinet role as Defence Secretary lasted only 85 days before she was sacked amid reports she was incapable of mastering the technical details of her brief, convince herself and her supporters that she was a serious contender to be Britain’s 57th prime minister?
Penny Mordaunt is not without attributes. Unlike Liz Truss, the woman who went into the contest as Leader of the Commons is a good communicator, who’s quick on her feet in the chamber.
And with her undoubted good looks and striking head of blonde hair, she cuts quite a dash as she strides the corridors of power. Indeed, her hair appears to have been the reason why, in a recent poll, the majority of people shown her photograph actually thought she was not a heavyweight politician at all but the chart-topping pop star Adele.
When I asked one minister to sum up her appeal, he whispered darkly: ‘Look, she’s very nice, charming, but she’s vacuous’. In fact she is so notorious for her woeful grasp of policy and detail that she has acquired the unfortunate nickname ‘Penny Dormant’.
On Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday show she batted away questions on policy, refusing to say whether she would keep the triple lock on pensions, or cut the NHS budget.
She even failed to confirm that she would raise benefits in line with inflation despite the fact that she had pledged to do just that at the Tory conference in Birmingham only three weeks ago.
While Johnson and Sunak secured endorsements from members of the Cabinet, the Mordaunt campaign was conspicuous by the absence of any heavyweight backers.
None of the ministers she had worked for in the past backed her in public. Take Lord Frost, who – as the chief Brexit negotiator – had Mordaunt as his deputy. Asked for his assessment, he said: ‘On the basis of what I saw I would have grave reservations about [her becoming PM]. It became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the Prime Minister to move her on.’
Her subsequent switch of jobs was not a great success either. At the Trade Department she gained a reputation for being unwilling to put in the hours or to travel abroad, an essential part of her role.
When a trade deal was signed with the US state of Indiana last year it is claimed that Mordaunt refused to go to the US or do media appearances because she was going to the Hay Festival to promote her book Greater: Britain After The Storm.
Written with the Remain-backing businessman Chris Lewis, the book should be required reading for any MPs taken in by Mordaunt’s chutzpah or who contemplate backing her in any future leadership run.
In the cliche-riddled tome she writes that, after Brexit and Covid, Britain needs a ‘well-executed national plan, we are a country longing for a mission’. The banalities come thick and fast. ‘The British live on an island.’ ‘Being British is difficult to explain.’ Even: ‘The majority of Britons eat meat pie at least once a month’.
As for the Union, she says Scotland won’t leave as the Scots, like the English and the Welsh and the Northern Irish, ‘moan about the weather’. Such insights!
A champion of the LGBT community – her twin James is gay – Mordaunt was named ‘Politician of the Year’ by Pink News in 2019 after she told Parliament ‘trans women are women’. She also referred to ‘pregnant people’ rather than ‘pregnant women’.
Pressed on her views during the leadership campaign, she rowed back on this remark, a worrying sign that she does not even have the courage of her own convictions.
The more one examines Mordaunt’s record, and her bland utterances, the more one realises she was a disaster waiting to happen. In high office she would have unravelled. We can only hope the new Prime Minister has not been taken in by her misplaced bravado.
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