Penny Mordaunt
 Penny Mordaunt      (politician) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Penny Mordaunt's "dream job"[1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 4 March 1973 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | UK | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
UK Conservative Party politician; future prime minister?
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Penelope Mary Mordaunt [2] is a Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North who was appointed Secretary of State for Defence on 1 May 2019, following the sacking of Gavin Williamson.[3]
On 24 July 2019, Penny Mordaunt was sacked as Defence Secretary by the new PM Boris Johnson and replaced by Ben Wallace.[4]
Penny Mordaunt was described as a 'dark horse candidate' for Prime Minister to replace Boris Johnson[5] but was eliminated from the race after picking up the backing of 105 Tory MPs, compared to Rishi Sunak with the backing of 137 colleagues and Liz Truss who gained the support of 113 in the fifth round of voting.[6]
Contents
Reality TV
In 2014 Mordaunt was a contestant on ITV show Splash!, in which celebrities learned to dive.[7] She donated all of her £10,000 appearance fee to veterans charities.[8]
Tory leadership hopeful
Clifford Thurlow writes:
Penny Mordaunt is the clean cut lady from the shires with an earthy smile and a heart of stone. Her voting record is one of suppressing any help for working people and every hand out going for the rich and the bankers.
Mordaunt voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits and against raising benefits in line with prices. She voted to reduce housing benefit for tenants deemed to have an extra bedroom (which Labour described as the 'bedroom tax'), and against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed.
To keep her extreme-right values polished like the family silverware, Ms Mordaunt has consistently voted to reduce corporation tax and for mass surveillance of people’s communications and activities. She voted for the disastrous privatisation of Royal Mail and against measures to prevent climate change.
She will make an excellent Prime Minister for the corporations, oil companies, American pharmaceutical giants carving up the NHS, the arms industry and every dodgy landlord, gang boss in the construction industry and chums who hide their money in secret accounts and don’t pay tax.[9]
Ministerial experience
Penny Mordaunt has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Portsmouth North since the 2010 UK General Election, and served in the Cameron Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government prior to[10][11] being appointed Minister of State for the Armed Forces at the Ministry of Defence in May 2015, the first woman to hold this post.[12]
From July 2016 to November 2017, she served in the May Government as Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, and in November 2017 she was appointed International Development Secretary.
On 1 May 2019, Penny Mordaunt was appointed Defence Secretary after Gavin Williamson was dismissed by Prime Minister Theresa May following a leak of highly classified information from the National Security Council.[13] She is the first woman to hold this post.
Prior becoming an MP, Mordaunt worked in business and communications and is currently the only female MP who is a Royal Naval Reservist. Following a training exercise in 2014, Acting Sub-Lieutenant Penny Mordaunt MP, who also belongs to HMS King Alfred, said:
- “This was by far the most challenging exercise I’ve taken part in and you really felt that all the skills, knowledge and resilience you’d built up over training were being tested to the max.”[14]
Bill Gates
As a minister, Mordaunt stood alongside Bill Gates at Edinburgh University.[15] He also wrote the forward for her new book.
Future Prime Minister
| George Galloway on Mordaunt's candidacy |
Mordaunt launched her bid to replace Boris Johnson.[16] Her navy experience has been touted.[17]
Books
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WEF/Annual Meeting/2019 | 22 January 2019 | 25 January 2019 | Switzerland World Economic Forum | "The reality is that we are in a Cold War [against China] that threatens to turn into a hot one." |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:MPs given guide to spotting conspiracy theories | Article | 10 May 2024 | Marianna Spring Jennifer McKiernan | Penny Mordaunt has commissioned a booklet for MPs on conspiracy theories. |
| Document:The conspiracy of lies about Corbyn that unites Sunak and Starmer | Article | 8 November 2022 | Peter Oborne | Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's abuse of his high office to smear Corbyn proves that he means to employ the same deceitful methods as his disgraced predecessor, Boris Johnson. |
References
- ↑ "Penny Mordaunt has got her dream job"
- ↑ Profile, ukwhoswho.com; accessed 8 May 2015.
- ↑ "Whatever Brexit deal Theresa May pursues needs to pass the Penny Mordaunt test"
- ↑ "Who’s who in Boris Johnson’s first cabinet"
- ↑ "Penny Mordaunt's political career as 'dark horse' MP surges in Tory leadership contest"
- ↑ "Britain’s next prime minister will be Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss"
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/15/tv-star-how-penny-mordaunt-celeb-past-could-help-in-race-to-be-pm
- ↑ https://metro.co.uk/2022/07/14/penny-mordaunt-bellyflopping-on-splash-as-politician-vies-for-pm-16997818/
- ↑ "Tory leadership - Runners-up"
- ↑ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10969676/Pen-portraits-of-the-10-Conservative-women-ministers-who-were-promoted-in-the-reshuffle.html
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2014/jul/15/brandon-lewis-housing-planning-minister-reshuffle
- ↑ https://twitter.com/David_Cameron/status/597790191621951488
- ↑ http://royalcentral.co.uk/state/breaking-the-queen-appoints-penny-mordaunt-as-the-first-ever-female-defence-secretary-121068
- ↑ "Royal Naval Reservists mission on the Dart"
- ↑ https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/penny-mordaunt-speech-at-edinburgh-university-with-bill-gates
- ↑ https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-penny-mordaunt-the-navy-reservist-and-ex-magicians-assistant-vying-to-become-pm-12651726
- ↑ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11015669/Senior-officers-questioned-Penny-Mordaunts-Navy-claims.html
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