Penny Mordaunt, currently the bookmakers’ favorite, is expected to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and Britain’s next Prime Minister.
She came in second in the first two Conservative members of Parliament elections, which were held on July 13 and 14. The party’s 180,000 or so members will vote on the last two candidates over the summer after additional votes have reduced the remaining five to just two.
If Mordaunt advances that far, she has a very good chance of winning because she is the member favorite, according to polls taken by the grassroots website ConservativeHome and pollster YouGov.
Who is she?
Mordaunt was born in 1973. Her father, a veteran paratrooper, gave her the British cruiser hms Penelope as her middle name. When she was nine years old, she claims that watching ships leave for the Falklands war in Portsmouth ignited her “passion and pride” in the United Kingdom (she is now a navy reservist).
After her mother passed away when she was 15 and her father became unwell the following year, her childhood became challenging. In addition to all the household responsibilities, she also had to raise her younger brother.
She attended the University of Reading while working as a magician’s assistant. In 2010, she won the Portsmouth North parliamentary seat.
Career
Under the premierships of David Cameron and Theresa May, her career flourished. She held the positions of secretary for foreign development, defense secretary, and minister of armed forces.
She supported Boris Johnson’s opponent Jeremy Hunt in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership race.
Her allies claim that this put her out of favor; thus, she has held more minor jobs, including paymaster-general and commerce minister.
She is not thought to have strong ideological beliefs. Despite her support for Brexit, she is not fixated on the divorce. She paints a positive picture of contemporary Britain as a lighthearted nation of the NHS, pubs, and the Human Rights Act in Greater: Britain After the Storm, a book she co-authored last year.
She advises giving money to MPs to donate to charitable causes in their constituencies and that the volunteers who participated in the recent protests be given money to distribute to those causes. Her plans frequently place an emphasis on community-based rather than structural solutions.