The candidate Labour fears most? It has to be Penny Mordaunt
The Leader of the Commons is popular among almost every group of voters – young, old, North and South
Yes, yes, I know we’re all suffering from PTSD (Post Truss Stress Disorder) and it’s beyond depressing to have to think about another leadership election.
“The funeral bak’d meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,” raged Hamlet about the mortifyingly brief gap between burying his father and his mother’s wedding. Conservative Party members who had only just put the “In Liz We Truss” poster in the recycling bin share his pain. Many have had enough. I don’t blame them, and yet, to avoid an extinction-level event at the next election and the ruinous prospect of socialism without end, Conservatives must swallow their dismay and focus as never before.
For Tory MPs who are deciding where to put their crosses in tomorrow’s leadership ballot, there is only one consideration that matters: pick the leader most feared by your enemy.
And that person is not Rishi Sunak or even Boris Johnson, whatever the Bring Back Boris (BBB) brigade may claim.
In a TV studio last week, I met a senior Opposition figure who confessed: “Penny is the one we absolutely didn’t want to face. I mean, Keir could make mincemeat of Rishi over his millions and the non-dom wife. Boris has more baggage than Ryanair. But what could Labour possibly say against a story like Penny Mordaunt’s? She comes from a much more humble background than Starmer. She impressed everyone by the way she conducted herself at the accession ceremony for the King. She’s amazing.”
He’s right. Penny Mordaunt is the one PM Labour isn’t sure it could beat. In the third act of the Revenger’s Tragedy that the Conservative Party currently resembles, a Rishi-Boris run-off is the most divisive option imaginable.
A worried country that craves a calm, stable, no-drama government will instead get a bitter battle between warring tribes.
Sunak may offer reassurance to the shires (although many still recoil at his perceived treachery against Johnson) but, as a technocrat and former head boy of Winchester, he will repel a Red Wall in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. If this lukewarm Brexiteer and highest-taxes-for-70-years exchancellor succeeds, MPs on the Right are likely to do a Gang of Four and defect to a new party.
Johnson has the opposite problem. His unique brand of matey magic seduced Red Wall seats in 2019, but towards the shambolic end of his premiership the Conservatives were haemorrhaging support in True Blue fiefdoms such as Tiverton and Honiton. Tory MPs in the South who support a Johnson comeback are in danger of voting for the Liberal Democrats, and their own P45s.
If Boris does put himself forward (a cheering thought in some ways, but now is really not the time) and the members pick him then all hell will break loose.
Our fifth prime minister in six years will also have been our third prime minister in 2022 alone, expelled back in July by more than 50 of his own ministers. There are some who will delight in that resurrection farce, but, trust me, the majority of swing-voters will not be amused.
The one person with a chance of uniting this bitter rabble, a politician who can appeal to both Red Wall and True Blue, is Mordaunt. She is what spies call a “clean skin”, a candidate untainted in the public mind by scandal.
Polling during the summer leadership campaign showed her to be the top choice among almost every group of voters, young and old, North and South.
They liked the look of the Navy reservist, a carer for her sick parents and mum to her brothers when she was only 15, who managed to turn her Labour-voting hometown of Portsmouth Tory in 2010 after suffering defeat at the first attempt.
The charismatic Mordaunt, who has held nine portfolios across eight government departments, came within eight votes of getting to the members’ round. But Sunak’s team felt he had a better chance of beating Liz Truss, who made it through by fair means or foul.
Well, they got the wrong blonde. As Truss rapidly proved to be a lame duck, she sent Mordaunt to answer an Urgent Question in her place. “I guess under this Tory Government, everybody gets to be Prime Minister for 15 minutes,” sneered Sir Keir Starmer.
Mordaunt fired straight back: “I am quietly confident that the Leader of the Opposition will not have 15 minutes of fame.”
BOOM! It should have been a moment of abject humiliation for the Government. How majestic Mordaunt was in her refusal to accept that humiliation. What fight, what wit, what spirit!
I know there are those who accuse Mordaunt of being too “woke” or too “wet”. I know her and I don’t agree. Do they really prefer a Labour government led by a man who took a knee to Black Lives Matter? Because that is now the stark choice. Make no mistake.
That is why I urge any Conservative MPs who are wavering today to do the right thing for the unity of their party and for the greater good of our exhausted country: pick the person feared by the enemy. Not Rishi, not Boris. It has to be PM for PM.
How majestic she was in her refusal to accept what should have been a moment of humiliation. What spirit!