Penny Mordaunt claims she is candidate ‘that Labour fear most’ – UK politics live

Q: Was Boris Johnson a good prime minister?

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Mordaunt says: “I think we should thank him for delivering Brexit – it was an incredibly difficult thing to do – and I think we should remember him for that.”

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Mordaunt says, if the Tories do not win the next election, the prospect of Brexit gains will be lost. She is the candidate most likely to win the election for the Tories, she says. She goes on:

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I am the candidate that Labour fear the most.

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(This is probably more than an idle boast. Some Labour figures say the same in private.)

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Q: People don’t know who you are. If you win, will you call an election to get a mandate?

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Mordaunt says she stood on the same platform as other MPs. They have a mandate. The British people want them to get on and deliver it, she says.

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Penny Mordaunt is holding her campaign launch.

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She is introduced by Andrea Leadsom, the former cabinet minister, who describes her as totally honourable.

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Mordaunt says she has been undertaking the equivalent of parliamentary speed dating as she has been meeting MPs.

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MPs are people who want to serve, she says. They are people who want to take responsibility. She says she has asked herself why.

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In her case, it goes back to being a nine-year-old, and watching the Falklands taskforce leave Portsmouth. She says she did not know much about it at the time, but she knew that her counry stood up to bullies. And that was important – important enough for some of her classmates’ fathers not to return home.

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She says Britain does not need a new role in the world. “We just need to be ourselves.”

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Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor who is seen as the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest, has given an interview to the Daily Telegraph in which he has presented his economic approach as “common sense Thatcherism”. He told the paper:

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We will cut taxes and we will do it responsibly. That’s my economic approach. I would describe it as common sense Thatcherism. I believe that’s what she would have done.

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Sunak also suggested that his upbringing, as the son of a chemist, had some parallels with Thatcher’s. He explained:

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If you read her speeches – and I’ve quoted her and Nigel Lawson [the former Tory chancellor] in other lectures I’ve given – her approach to these things was to make sure that as a nation you have to earn what you spend.

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She talked about the person at home with their family budget. She talked about that really powerfully. That resonated with me, because that’s how I was brought up.

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My mum was a small businesswoman, she was a chemist. I worked in my mum’s small chemist in Southampton. I did my mum’s books – that was part of my job. I also did payroll and accounts every week and every month.

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