Penny Mordaunt

Penny Mordaunt has emerged as an early favourite for the top job, with many bookmakers putting her level with former Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

However, she was replaced by Ben Wallace when Mr Johnson took over as leader two months later. Ms Mordaunt is the only candidate so far promising to reverse the Treasury’s “stealth tax” of freezing income tax thresholds. Ms Mordaunt has recently been pushing for state-wide trade deals with the US and has been leading the work on joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc. She is a Royal Navy reservist, following in the military footsteps of her father. The 49-year-old is from Torquay in Devon. She is the daughter of a former paratrooper, and says she is named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Penelope. Before becoming an MP, Ms Mordaunt was head of youth for the Conservative Party under former Prime Minister John Major, and was head of broadcasting under William Hague. She also briefly worked as head of foreign press for George W Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000.

A new poll of Conservative party members has put Penny Mordaunt on track to win the Tory leadership contest.

Too early to tell.’ MPs have already started voting in the first ballot of the race to replace Mr Johnson, with Mr Sunak the first candidate to cast a ballot. While the former chancellor is currently a frontrunner in the contest and expected to clear the first ballot with ease, he performed poorly in the head-to-heads presented in the poll.

Penny Mordaunt says it's time for the Conservative party to return to “low tax, small state, personal responsibility”

“I have more members of the so-called Red Wall seats supporting me and I have got Jake Berry who is working with me hand-in-glove to make sure we deliver a much better policy for the whole of the country.” “Recently I think our party has lost our sense of self,” she said as she called for a return to the Tory “hit” policies of “low tax, small state, personal responsibility”. “I also urge all candidates to set out their vision for the future of health and social care: our NHS is too important to be left out of this contest.”

Penny Mordaunt will believe momentum is with her - whereas Foreign Secretary Liz Truss should feel anxious, writes Robert Peston. | ITV National News.

So the question is whether he has enough backers signed up or likely to come over such that he can lend some of their votes to any candidate he would feel more confident of beating in the final run-off. You will notice I am making a bold assumption - which may not hold - that Sunak is very likely to get to the long run-off contest over the summer, since he needs only another 32 votes to reach the magic 120, which guarantees a spot in the last two. For those Boris Johnson loyalists who want Sunak beaten at all costs, one question is whether they transfer their loyalties from Truss to Mordaunt - especially since recent polling (for example by YouGov) shows that Sunak may struggle to beat Mordaunt in the final run-off when Tory party members make the important decision on which of the two top candidates will be party leader and prime minister.

The trade minister launched her pitch to be the next prime minister by assuring Conservative MPs she is best placed to keep them their seats.

“Well, they’re very sensible people because I’m a threat to their campaign,” she said, but added that the only people she will take the fight to is the Opposition. She argued that having stood on the same platform as Mr Johnson and other Tories in the 2019 election “we have a mandate and a big majority”. “I’m the candidate that Labour fear the most – and they’re right to,” she told Conservatives and reporters closely crammed into the sweltering room. The long-term Brexit backer said the Government supply side reforms would yield a “Brexit dividend” on investment, infrastructure and innovation. Leadership contender Penny Mordaunt has told Conservative MPs fearful of losing their seats under Boris Johnson that she is the candidate “Labour fear the most”. But she insisted she is “very different” from her would-be predecessor but indicated she would not call an early general election to win her own mandate if she entered No 10.

The trade minister has been described as 'continuity Boris Johnson' and 'Theresa May with bigger hair' but her allies say her most important quality is ...

An MP who knows Ms Mordaunt well says this is a “dirty trick” and that she is “resolutely wedded to her red box”. One MP who knows her well says she can. The source added that her stance on trans rights might prove a stumbling block. Many see her as a strong contender to face the ex-Chancellor in the final run-off. Her grandmother’s cousin is Dame Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote fame, and she starred, whie an MP, in the celebrity diving programme Splash!, donating her £10,000 appearance fee to charity. Ms Perrior, who has known the leadership candidate for more than 20 years, says: “She trained me and I looked up to her.