I remain baffled by the popularity of Penny Mordaunt. Here she is still supporting Liz Truss, while Liz Truss is known to have been vehemently against all those things that Mordaunt supposedly holds dear, like investing in the Royal Navy and education.
Truss’s attitude to the Navy alone is rich pickings. In her now infamous 2009 ‘Back to Black’ pamphlet, which promoted a catastrophic slashing of state expenditure, she and her buddies laid out the dream. She didn’t want the new aircraft carriers to be built. She wanted the defence budget to be slashed. She was unsure about renewing Trident. It was, despite her being a true blue Tory by then, classic Liberal Democrat stuff; but while liberals would want the money saved re-invested in education and health spending, Truss wanted that slashed too.
Mordaunt meanwhile is supposed to be an ardent supporter of the Royal Navy, a reservist no less (and don’t we know about it). She has made much mileage out of her navy credentials, not only in her Portsmouth constituency which just happens to be the ‘home of the Royal Navy’, but also during her inexplicably well-backed Tory leadership bid. While ‘just’ a Minster of State in the Defence portfolio, she made clear the UK’s commitment to the completion and strategic centrality of HMS Queen Eliabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. I wonder what can possibly be attracting Penny Mordaunt to be hovering at the butt-end of the defence-slashing Liz Truss who is about to vacate her Foriegn Secretary portfolio?
(The whole ‘Back to Black’ pamphlet co-authored by Truss is discussed here.)
So here we have the unedifying spectacle of Mordaunt continuing to cling on to Truss’s slimy coat-tails, and failing to speak out on the screamingly obvious concerns that Truss’s candidacy raises, all the while knowing that a Truss-led administration will be a disaster for her own constituency and her beleagured constituents in Portsmouth North. Instead, Mordaunt makes lame excuses.
Then there’s the whole work ethic problem. We have Truss who apparently calls us all lazy, meaning she’s a pretty superficial thinker; and Mordaunt who herself has been accused of being absent from post for no good reason, meaning that - to put it mildly - she’s not known for being on top of things. The ‘shirk-shamer’ and the alleged shirker. You couldn’t make it up.
What I think about the Navy budget doesn’t matter. I’m not running for Prime Minister or trying to ingratiate myself into the vacant post of Foreign Secretary. At that level of politics, raging hypocricy matters and this incipient Cabinet of two-faced, talentless surface-floaters will be taking our country down shortly. I’m feeling quite scuppered already.
