Penny Mordaunt would make a great leader – of the Labour party

The clouds have cleared, the fog has lifted, clarity has arrived. The first reaction to finding out Penny Mordaunt was well ahead in the polls and the favourite to win the leadership contest – ‘who again?’ – has passed. But after reading a little of her work, I am now convinced that Penny Mordaunt would make a great leader – of the Labour party. For the Conservatives, she would be a complete disaster.

There is little in Mordaunt’s public record that suggests she is particularly amenable to Conservative views. The core thrust of her book (written with Chris Lewis) is that Britain needs to be ‘modernised’ – a word that to conservatives generally signals ‘made more amenable to Blairites’.

The Houses of Parliament? Why, they’re ‘about as out of touch with a modern democracy as it’s possible to be’. The government should set ‘regional economic growth targets’. The various Orders of the British Empire? Well they should have been abolished long ago: ‘even when we recognise an issue… we are slow to change’.