Mordaunt Bids to Lead UK by Showing Tories What They Missed

(Bloomberg) -- Penny Mordaunt stood in for UK Prime Minister Liz Truss temporarily in the House of Commons on Monday. Now she wants the job full time.

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“I fully appreciate the optics of my appearing at the dispatch box” instead of Truss, she told lawmakers -- just one of many lines that day that watchers interpreted as a thinly-veiled pitch for the top job in British politics.

Decades of Networking Have Put Penny Mordaunt in Reach of Power

Mordaunt, 49, was managing to deliver on her brief to apologize for Truss’s absence with a straight face, while still landing some devastating blows. “The prime minister is not under a desk,” she said at one point.

It was a performance that demonstrated to Conservative MPs what they missed out on when Mordaunt lost in the last Tory leadership contest. The contrast with Truss and her strained delivery could not have been more stark.

After the prime minister drew a line under her short but tortuous tenure on Thursday, Mordaunt will be hoping MPs see her parliamentary bravura as the ticket to overturning the opposition Labour Party’s record lead in opinion polls.

“She’s got huge qualities: experience in government, team-player, unifying, someone who’s beaten Labour in a Labour seat,” one Tory MP, Harriett Baldwin, told ITV. Another supportive lawmaker, Bob Seely told BBC radio: “She has the qualities to unite the party and lead the nation.”

Truss’s implosion has given Mordaunt another shot at 10 Downing Street far sooner than she might have expected. Mordaunt was only narrowly edged out by Truss as they vied for a place in the leadership run-off against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in the summer.

Divided Party

The bitterness and rancor of that campaign still hangs over the Tory party and contributed to Truss becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history -- though her lack of political acumen and economic competence undoubtedly played leading roles in her downfall.

The problem for Mordaunt and her rivals is that there appears no end in sight to the soap opera engulfing the Conservatives. Truss’s successor will become the party’s fifth premier in less than seven years since the 2016 Brexit vote.

Much of the ensuing chaos has run through Boris Johnson, who was ousted as premier following a storm of resignations from his scandal-ridden government in July but who is -- almost inconceivably -- seeking a comeback now.

Far from the quick and calm process party managers were aiming for, the contest looks more likely to rip open old wounds while inflicting new ones. Johnson backers loathe Sunak, who they blame for precipitating the former prime minister’s downfall.

Rival Bids

At the same time, Sunak supporters are likely to view the potential candidacy of Suella Braverman with suspicion, given she’s further to the right than Truss on some social issues. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, fourth last time, may struggle to get enough support. And both Braverman and Badenoch could take votes from Johnson on the ideological right of the party.

Many Tory MPs are calling for a more stable, unifying figure but lost an obvious choice when Defence Secretary Ben Wallace ruled himself out on Friday.

It leaves Mordaunt clear to make her unity pitch.

In the contest that installed Truss as premier, Mordaunt placed second to Sunak -- and ahead of Truss -- in every round of voting among her MP colleagues until the critical one. It left Truss as the clear favorite when she and Sunak were put to grassroots members for a final say -- though the eventual margin of victory was smaller than many predicted.

This time around, all the signs are Tory grandees are trying to avoid the issue going to grassroots members at all. MPs will hold an indicative vote among the final two candidates, and the pressure is likely to be enormous on whoever places second to drop out before the runoff vote.

Grassroots Appeal

But it is hard to see why Mordaunt would do that if she placed second to Sunak, for example. She’s enormously popular with the activists and would fancy her chances in a runoff. In July, a ConservativeHome website survey of party members ranked her second behind Wallace on who should be leader.

That popularity is as a result of years of networking to build support among members and donors. Mordaunt has long been a regular on what’s known as the rubber chicken circuit -- social events for members and activists — often elderly, often male -- who elect Conservative leaders.

Still, she’s not without her critics. In the last contest, opponents accused her of inconsistency over transgender rights, a sensitive issue within the party. Badenoch sought to portray her as an advocate of gender self-ID, something Mordaunt denied.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, then her boss at the trade department, complained “there have been a number of times when she hasn’t been available,” leaving others to “pick up the pieces.”

And Tories who have worked with both Truss and Mordaunt say that of the two, Mordaunt is actually less competent, citing her lack of organization and suggesting her core advisers don’t have the experience to run the country. Mordaunt’s team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Popular Pitch

But she is a Brexiteer -- which plays well with the Tory base -- as does her bawdy sense of humor, which she’s deployed in the past in the House of Commons, making interventions laced with innuendo.

During the last leadership contest focused her pitch on other popular issues including patriotism, high defense spending and a tax cut on petrol.

Mordaunt was born in Torquay, Devon. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was 15; her father was also diagnosed with cancer and she became a magician’s assistant to help support the family. Her early political life saw her work for both of George W Bush’s successful US presidential campaigns.

A Royal Navy reservist who is dyslexic, she was elected to Parliament in 2005 and joined the government in 2014. The first woman to serve as armed forces minister, she then entered Cabinet as international development secretary in 2017 and was promoted to defense secretary in 2019 -- another first.

She was fired by Johnson after supporting his rival in the leadership campaign, but he later gave her a junior ministerial role, before Truss brought her back into Cabinet as Leader of the House of Commons.

It was there on Monday that Mordaunt gave Tory MPs a preview of what duels with Keir Starmer could look like if they make her prime minister. In a raucous session, the Labour leader opened by suggesting that in the chaos engulfing the Tory government, everyone gets a turn as leader.

“I am quietly confident that the Leader of the Opposition will not have his 15 minutes of fame,” Mordaunt retorted, giving rank-and-file Tories massed behind her one of their few laughs in weeks.

--With assistance from Alex Wickham.

(Updates with line on how Mordaunt is perceived in 21st paragraph.)

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