She turned to Gordon Brown for advice

GORDON Brown was approached by Penny Mordaunt for advice on a book ahead of her Tory leadership run, it emerged last night.

The contender asked the Labour former prime minister for ideas on how to make the country better and develop a ‘national plan’ for recovering from the pandemic. Miss Mordaunt made the surprise request while writing Greater: Britain After the Storm.

The book, which was published last year, is seen as a manifesto for how she would lead if she became prime minister.

Ideas put forward in the book include modernising the House of Commons. It argues that parliament should be improved to ‘facilitate democracy’ with the re-introduction of electronic voting and video conferencing. Both were used during the pandemic at great expense. It would allow MPs to spend more time in their constituencies, bringing politicians closer to their voters and helping to rebuild trust, she suggested.

Miss Mordaunt also said the state could be smaller, more efficient and more localised to give voters a better connection with government and ‘engender local trust’.

She suggested sending Civil Service high-flyers on the fast-track scheme out of Whitehall to local communities ‘where their talent can be used more productively’.

It is understood that Mr Brown, pictured, did not provide Miss Mordaunt with ideas for her book. But she won praise from Labour former prime minister Tony Blair, who described it as ‘really important’. ‘Whatever disagreements there are about the recent political past, there is no doubt at all that the spirit Britain needs for its future is one that is optimistic, outward-looking, innovative and inclusive,’ Sir Tony wrote.

The book, which was co-authored by multi-millionaire PR guru Chris Lewis, also carried endorsements from Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and Sir Elton John. Miss Mordaunt and Mr Lewis chartered a helicopter to fly to the Hay literature festival last May to promote it.

Rival campaigns have labelled her ‘part-time Penny’. In her job as trade minister, Miss Mordaunt is responsible for state-by-state US trade deals and when the UK signed its first with Indiana she did not travel to the ceremony as it was at the same time as Hay.

Miss Mordaunt did not dispute she had approached Mr Brown. But a source on her campaign said the former PM ‘had no involvement’.