How I plan to turn Britain around

This is the full text of Penny Mordaunt’s Tory leadership campaign launch:

Over the past few days, I have been engaged in a form of speed dating with my colleagues. I’ve learnt a lot. I know that some of them were councillors before they came into parliament, they ran businesses, they worked with the voluntary sector, some of them are still pulling shifts in the NHS or with our armed forces, and many are veterans.
They want to serve others. And when I meet people like that I wonder what it was that made them step up and take responsibility, to serve and make a difference. Was it a life experience or an inspirational person that instilled that love and pride in their country? And when did they start to feel that way?
For me, I can remember exactly where it was. I was a nine-year-old and I was standing on the Hotwalls in Portsmouth watching the Falklands Taskforce leave the harbour. Now I didn’t know much about that site but witnessing it and Thatcher’s resolve at the time – well, I knew my country stood up to bullies. And I knew that was important. Important enough for some of those ships and my classmate’s father’s not to return.
I’d seen duty, and sacrifice, and service. And it’s the reason why when I’m asked what Global Britain means and what our role in the world should be I say we don’t need a new role in the world, we just need to be ourselves. We feel these values keenly. They’re the values of our party, they’re also values of our country. And that is why we’re the most successful party in our country’s history. Because we are in tune with its values, and when we’ve failed it’s because we drifted from them.
Recently, I think we’ve lost a sense of ourselves. It’s like being a member of the Glastonbury audience watching Paul McCartney play his set – we indulge the new tunes but really, we wanted the old classics that we all knew the words too. Low tax, personal responsibility, small state.
And we need a return to that because we have some challenges ahead. We’ve got to stave off a recession, we’ve got huge expectations to deliver on with Brexit, and we have new burdens to shoulder – a catch-up job from the pandemic, war. We have a manifesto to deliver, and standards and trust to restore. And our country is fed up – it’s fed up of poor delivery, it’s fed up of unfulfilled promises, it’s fed up of divisive politics.
So, how do we turn this around?
Firstly, we have to recognise that Whitehall is broken. And in my administration Whitehall will look and feel very different, very fast. We’re going to introduce machinery of government changes – a tighter cabinet, really strongly empowered Ministers of State with clear deliverables. And the white heat of modernisation will rise through this government so that we can move at the speed that business and science needs us to.
Secondly, we need to build a modern economy. You’ll have heard pitches this week on tax and spend – I’m going to be talking about growth and competition. My key fiscal rule will be that debt as a percentage of GDP will fall over time. Monetary policy will be focused on controlling inflation and supply-side reforms will yield a Brexit dividend. Investment, infrastructure, incentives, and innovation.
Thirdly, we need to enable all our citizens to live well and from me you’ll have a relentless focus on cost of living. Immediately we will cut by 50 per cent VAT on fuel at the pump, and we will raise income tax thresholds for basic and middle-income earners in line with inflation. And we need to extract more value too. For example, through simplifying and reducing the cost of being tax compliant and getting things to work better. And that is why we’re going to put power back in the hands of parents.
We will create a personal budgets to allow every child to access their entitlement to subsidised childcare at any time prior to starting full-time school. And going to also establish some taskforces to address the crises and paralysis in both access to NHS services and dentistry, and vitally stagnant housebuilding.
Fourthly, we need to recognise that if we want to be successful at levelling-up we cannot be limited in our ambition by what is in the Treasury coffers. So, I want to align our planning cycles in government to those of business and the charity sector which are already aligned. That will create opportunities to create more partnerships, more co-funding. We need some national missions across all sectors we can all contribute to. And I want to also set up some social capital funding that Members of Parliament themselves can direct.
And finally, I want all of us to be able to live safely and securely. Not only will I maintain our manifesto and our NATO spending commitments, but I also want to take the pressure off our armed services by removing what others can do. So, I will stand up a civil defence force as I outlined when I rewrote this country’s National Resilience Strategy. And I also want us to capitalise and consolidate on the huge outpouring of volunteers that happened during the pandemic.
My country and my party have been through a lot, but we’ve got stamina – make no mistake about that. In that moment of crisis in the pandemic the people of our country stepped forwards. They were moved by the values and love of country too. They are capable, they are responsible people, and they expect their government to be too. And they expect that we should make use of both the mandate and the majority they handed us.
I can, and I will.