Penny Mordaunt is the only candidate in this leadership election whose formative political experience was war. She claimed this week that she knew she was a conservative as soon as she watched Margaret Thatcher’s naval task force sail from Portsmouth Harbour as the Falklands War began in 1982. The ships, the uniforms, the flags. Mordaunt saw the pomp and the guns, and her thoughts turned to Westminster. She was distant enough from the blood and the smoke to be made optimistic by the conflict.
This buttery patriotism is one part of Mordaunt’s political make-up. There is also a Cameroonian social liberalism, pro-immigration, and pro-LGBT rights; she is a Brexiteer. Her breezy-sunny style is giggly and Johnsonian. Mordaunt appears to not take herself very seriously. She wants to smooth Tory edges, get the party back to basics, and embody a cuddly new One Nation synthesis.
Her battered country and her fratricidal party are not really in trouble. They just need to rediscover who they are. Like every centrist — for that is what Mordaunt is — she thinks all sensible people share the same values.
Political colleagues say they have no idea what she believes or thinks. Only 11% of the public, and 16% of Conservative voters, can correctly name Penny Mordaunt when shown a photo of her. But Tory members, though they are old, anti-immigration and disconcerted by social change, appear charmed by this young, pro-immigration, social change welcoming candidate. The heart wants what it wants. It helps that she is never less than vague. “We don’t need a new role in the world — just to be ourselves,” she said in her speech. For party members she is a bare wall. They can light her with their flickering projections. A (supposed) mystery might be welcomed by the public too. After the too graphic, pointillist detail Boris Johnson forced on Britain about his own life, being unknown looks like a political advantage.
Compared with her rivals, Mordaunt’s political career has been low-wattage. Her family’s military background, and her sideline as a naval reservist, made her appointment as Secretary of Defence in 2019 a realised dream. It lasted for two months. She backed Jeremy Hunt in that year’s leadership contest. For that Johnson removed her from the post.
Luckily for us, Mordaunt used the downtime that followed to write a book “to learn more about my country”. Intentionally, and unintentionally, Greater: Britain After The Storm is filled with useful disclosures. Though it is written with a co-author, the book feels more distinctly personal than anything else Mordaunt has done in public. Nothing is more revealing than a person’s prose, not even nudity.
The bare bones: after the financial crash, Brexit, and Covid, Britain needs a “well-executed national plan”. We are a country longing for a “mission”. Though we are apparently “living longer, healthier, happier, wealthier lives than ever before”, the median Brit, like the nation at large, lacks self-esteem. Only Mordaunt’s plan-mission — a project outlined with no more specificity than the frequent use of the word “modernise” — can make Britain better.
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