The rise of Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Trade Policy, may have blindsided some political pundits, but she has polled as the runaway favourite to become our next Prime Minister.
Mordaunt, who has served as the MP for Portsmouth North since 2010, has now polled as the runaway favourite to become Prime Minister by Conservative Party members. She’s also become the bookies’ preferred choice for the top job, with odds of 8/11.
But her rise to the political arena is a well-trodden path: joining Conservative Central Office under William Hague and boasting 12 years as an MP.briefly crossed paths with Mordaunt six years ago when she was a minister at a Conservative Party conference.‘Mordaunt does have very good people skills,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘She certainly is good at that “small p” politics that can be forgotten in wider campaigns but is so important.
Despite her alliance with Leadsom, May offered Mordaunt a fairly tasty Cabinet position when she was in power – after being the Secretary for International Development, in 2019 she was promoted to Secretary for Defence. However, the position was short-lived, and Mordaunt was demoted when Johnson took the top job – with sources pointing towards a ‘clash in personalities’ between herself and the PM.
Mordaunt’s somewhat unclear political standing isn’t always a bad thing though, according to Burnell.‘You need some policies at election time, but unless Mordaunt is planning to hold a snap election in the Autumn, she’s got plenty of time to sort that out,’ she explains. ‘From what I’ve seen, she’s trying to find a common ground in a divided party.’
‘Let me deal with the issue floating around in the background,’ she said as she announced her leadership bid. ‘It was Margaret Thatcher who said that “every Prime Minister needs a Willie”. A woman like me doesn’t have one.’ While this sort of behaviour would have been typically widely lambasted from both sides of the chamber, buffoonery and self-promotion have been a firm part of the Boris Johnson playbook of politics – which ultimately saw him secure the top job – so such ‘japes’ seemingly no longer serve as a reason to retire someone from a leadership race.
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