From BLM to WFH: Tory leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt in her own words throughout her political career
- Leadership hopeful Mordaunt claimed rivals are depicting her as ‘woke warrior’
- She is facing further scrutiny after it emerged she praised the BLM movement
- Daily Mail has looked up past comments so the public can decide for themselves
Penny Mordaunt was facing further scrutiny last night after it emerged she has praised the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, championed working from home and flip-flopped on foreign aid.
The leadership hopeful has claimed that rivals depicting her as a ‘woke warrior’ want to damage her reputation, and has sought to depict herself as ‘no-nonsense’ and ‘down-to-earth’.
Now the Daily Mail has looked up her past comments so the public can decide for themselves…
Backing BLM
Miss Mordaunt has praised the controversial BLM movement for drawing attention to ‘inequality and injustice’. She made the comments in her book, Greater: Britain After The Storm, published in 2020.
She also appeared to defend the movement after she slammed football fans who booed England players taking the knee, a gesture of support for BLM.
She told the i newspaper: ‘I think it’s very clear what the football players are signalling. It’s clearly a really raw issue for a lot of the team.’
Yet she also sought to appeal to the Tory base after the Cenotaph was desecrated by BLM protesters in 2020, by calling for vandals to be sent to ‘battle camps’ to teach them respect.
Penny Mordaunt was facing further scrutiny last night after it emerged she has praised the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, championed working from home and flip-flopped on foreign aid
As a parliamentary hopeful for Portsmouth North in 2008, Miss Mordaunt joined forces with the Commons leader at the time, Theresa May, to demand women be allowed to work from home.
She accused small businesses who refused to adopt flexible working of having a ‘really sexist and outdated attitude’.
Miss Mordaunt also supported the reintroduction of working from home measures in December last year in response to the spread of Omicron, despite the variant having yet to hospitalise a single person in the UK at the time.
She has said that working from home in part helped her realise she was dyslexic, a condition she was diagnosed with in 2020, aged 47.
She added: ‘I think everything was exacerbated by the fact I was having to do so much online.
‘It’s harder for me to read things on a screen than on paper.’
Foreign aid flip-flop
The former secretary for international development oversaw a boom in spending at her department – but has also slammed the scale of the UK’s aid budget. The amount of cash Britain pumped out to help other nations swelled by more than £555million to £14billion while she was in charge of the department in 2017.
She hit back at criticism at the time by arguing that Britain had a role to play on a global stage.
But in 2019 she declared the UK’s aid target was ‘unsustainable’ and that the Government should shift its focus towards attracting private donations.
The leadership hopeful has claimed that rivals depicting her as a ‘woke warrior’ want to damage her reputation, and has sought to depict herself as ‘no-nonsense’ and ‘down-to-earth’
Losing lottery battle
The MP for Portsmouth North was the spokesman for a National Lottery quango that was axed after squandering millions of pounds on controversial groups.
Miss Mordaunt was communications director at the Lottery Community Fund during the early 2000s when it handed out £400,000 to an anti-deportation group that had championed the case of two Palestinian bombers and an Islamic cleric said to be a ‘danger to national security’.
The Tory leadership hopeful boasted to PR Week magazine in 2006 that she fought a furious Daily Mail over the issue, but it was a battle she ultimately lost.
In 2003, the fund was scrapped following a campaign by this newspaper. Its board was said to be angry at being punished for giving cash to controversial causes.
Unelected PM?
As a newly elected MP in 2010, Miss Mordaunt said the electorate didn’t want a prime minister ‘they haven’t had a say on, like Gordon Brown’, when talking about negotiations between Labour and the Lib Dems over a possible coalition.
Mr Brown did not call an immediate general election to consolidate his power after he took over from Tony Blair as PM in 2007.
Miss Mordaunt has not said whether she will call a general election if she becomes PM.
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