Uni vote chaos and Brown jibe come back to haunt Penny

EXCLUSIVE BY JOHN SIDDLE

PENNY Mordaunt’s leadership election bid comes as two embarrassing pollrelated gaffes are revealed.

In the first, Ms Mordaunt was blamed for an election dubbed a “fiasco of epic proportions”... when she was a 22-year-old student politician.

She graduated in philosophy from Reading University, Berks, and won the race to become its Students’ Union president back in 1995.

But within months she was accused of bungling polls to fill other union committee roles.

The November 1995 elections saw chaotic scenes, according to reports uncovered by the Sunday Mirror from the student paper Spark.

One candidate who dropped out told the paper: “Absolutely nothing was organised.

“We all turned up for the hustings and they didn’t seem prepared. I wouldn’t point the finger directly, but the president has to take the blame.”

Reports at the time described the scenes as “election madness” and pictured a fresh-faced Ms Mordaunt, who went on to land a string of PR jobs.

She became uni union president after winning just 820 votes from a possible 12,000.

That meant fewer than one in 14 students actually voted for the future Tory leadership contender.

She was a Conservative Party member early — becoming the party’s head of youth under Sir John Major in the 1990s and later serving as head of broadcasting for William Hague, another former Tory leader. She also worked for George Bush’s US presidential campaign in 2004.

The second embarrassment surrounds a newly uncovered jibe from 12 years ago which has come back to haunt Ms Mordaunt.

The Sunday Mirror found a report from her local paper in which she said: “The people don’t want another Prime Minister they haven’t had a say on, like Gordon Brown was.”

She was speaking over uncertainty over who would lead the country after Mr Brown announced he would step down following the 2010 election, in which no party had an overall majority.

It led to an uncertain period before David Cameron’s Tories brokered a coalition deal with the Lib Dems, then led by Nick Clegg.

But if turns out Ms Mordaunt does win the race to lead the Tories, she will be parachuted to Downing Street – without giving the general public any say.

The people don’t want a PM they haven’t had say on PENNY MORDAUNT ON 2010 ELECTION RESULT