Penny Mordaunt for PM… why not! She can’t win – but she might just prevent a total Tory wipeout

The emergence of Mordaunt as a possible ‘caretaker’ prime minister – one better placed than Rishi Sunak to help the Conservatives survive the general election bloodbath that’s coming – is a symptom of extreme panic gripping the right of the party, says Sean O’Grady. They’ve finally realised they’re all going to lose their jobs

Penny Mordaunt, carrying the Sword of State in procession through Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles (PA)

Are we about to get our fourth prime minister in four years? It does feel a bit absurd, doesn’t it?

Even for those of us who stick to the constitutional convention that, at our general elections, we vote for a parliament and not a presidential prime minister, ditching Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss, then Rishi Sunak and installing Penny Mordaunt in No 10 without consulting the British people feels a step too far.

Of course, what they really want is a general election and to give the Tories, whoever their leader is, a jolly good spanking, which some of them might enjoy.

But the signs are we aren’t going to get what’s called an “early election”, and the Tories are doomed whatever happens. The real challenge for a new leader such as Mordaunt – the nearest thing they have to a centrist – is to ensure that there is something left for them to build after the Labour landslide submerges them.

Time is running out for the Tories, which may seem obvious, but they’ve deluded themselves for too long that recovery is just around the corner. A May or June election isn’t “early” when it should have been held sometime last year, according to the traditional electoral cycle, and we are now almost at the end of this eventful five-year parliament.

It will, in fact, be a very overdue election, whenever it is held. We know Sunak has ruled out early May, and recommitted himself to the latter half of the year – September onwards, in practical terms – but there is media gossip that he or his team are fretting that the whole thing is unsustainable and they won’t make it to November. The truth is that so far from “sticking to the plan”, one of Sunak’s favourite robotic phrases, they don’t yet have a working plan for the date of the general election – about the only thing this prime minister is still in control of.

That sense of panic is mounting around the parliamentary party, many of whom seem to have woken up only recently to the prospect of imminent mass unemployment. At the weekend, armed forces minister James Heappey became the 62nd Tory to reveal he will not be seeking re-election. Plenty more are expected to follow suit before the date is called.

Perhaps it’s because most Tory quitters have been elected since the party came to power, in coalition, in 2010, and such a large proportion had their majorities artificially secured or exaggerated by the 2019 general election; they’ve been so complacent for so long they can’t imagine losing seats continuously held by the Tories since the days of Stanley Baldwin.

The Johnson near-landslide, we now see, wasn’t the beginning of some epochal realignment of British politics but merely a decision by an exhausted people to end the agonies of the European debate and “get Brexit done”. Jeremy Corbyn turned people off; others were charmed and deceived by Johnson’s cynical waffle about “levelling up”. But now Brexit is “done”, and the voters are disillusioned with the Tories and can’t wait to get shot of them.

No alternative leader will alter that established electoral fact. Another change in the leadership would be taken by the public as further proof that this bitterly divided and terminally confused lot shouldn’t be trying to run the country.

As it happens, installing Mordaunt – who came a strong third in the race to succeed Johnson, behind Truss and Sunak – without a farcical leadership election involving the grassroots would be surprisingly easy. And she would be an undoubted improvement on Sunak, who is plunging Mariana Trench depths of unpopularity last explored by his brief predecessor.

Mordaunt can’t win the next election – that’s ridiculous – but she could moderate the catastrophe. She’s a sort of Dunkirk candidate, rescuing something from the carnage, so unexpectedly it feels like a victory.

It could be done swiftly, as it has been before, if the cabinet plotted, acted and advised Sunak to go. If there were no other challengers, Mordaunt would be installed swiftly and acclaimed by the parliamentary party in a coronation – and she has some experience in helping to organise coronations. She’d be good at the despatch box, her astringent, mordant wit making a welcome change from Sunak’s rubbish jibes at Starmer.

The first female secretary of state for defence, her peculiar “stand up and fight” rallying speech at the most recent Tory conference didn’t land particularly well, because she might as well have asked the largely elderly and somnolent audience to get up and boogie. But her Henry V routine might work better on the campaign stump,

Aside from her “fowl language” speech in 2014 when, having lost a bet with Royal Navy officer friends, she said the word “c**k” in parliament six times, Mordaunt is a serious woman for serious times. She is also about the only person who has any chance of uniting the party if the right could be persuaded to forgive her for once telling the Commons that a trans woman is a woman and allow her to edge her party back to the compassionate centre of politics.

She’d get to be PM for about eight months, would pick up a few points in the opinion polls, save a bunch of Tory MPs from losing their jobs – herself included – and secure herself a future in the dismal world of lobbying. Perhaps then the party wouldn’t go down to its worst defeat since 1832. Which would be something.

Like her commitments to politics and the Royal Navy, taking on the leadership now would be an act of service for which she would receive some perks but no thanks. Nigel Farage would be forever telling people she doesn’t know what a woman is. The right would turn on her over the European Convention on Human Rights, migration and tax because they will never ever be satisfied. Labour and the other opposition parties will point out that she has no mandate, and that she once actually wanted Truss to be prime minister. They’ll make fun of her jargon-laden book, Greater. Her detractors, unimpressed with her achievements, nicknamed her “Pretty Dormant”.

Being a true believer Brexiteer endears Mordaunt to her party but not to a nation disillusioned by Brexit. She’s dismissed the current tumult about her, while her closest rival, Kemi Badenoch, has “helpfully” denied Mordaunt’s ambitions for her and urged Mordaunt’s allies to stop speculating. But these wannabe leaders always say that until they declare their candidacy in conditions they couldn’t possibly foresee…

Mordaunt’s opportunity, should she want it, will arise in the completely predictable conditions of the May local and mayoral election disasters. These will surely exceed any of the many previous electoral humiliations in this parliament, and it may be the moment when Sunak decides to quit with as much dignity and honour as he can manage; or his colleagues decide that they have nothing to lose by handing Mordaunt the job. It’s like a football club suddenly staring at relegation and sacking the manager because virtually anyone else might do a better job, and they have to “do something”. History suggests that’s not always the answer – but on occasion, a new manager can save the team. It’s worth a go.

It won’t make much difference to the Tories’ chances of actually winning the election, whoever the leader is, because it’s the entire party that the public is tired of. No replacement for Sunak will have the time, resources or political support to change that, let alone the country – at least, not sufficiently to secure a fifth term.

If they can’t win the next election, their best hope is to avoid an extinction event. Penny won’t be able to stop the boats, she can’t fix the NHS, and she won’t end the cost of living crisis – but she might just help her party survive, and not fall so far that it just gets taken over by Farage. For that alone, she deserves a chance.