For Penny Mordaunt, this TV debate will be the ultimate sacrifice

When the leader of the Commons appears in tonight’s seven-way election debate, a stand-in for the embattled prime minister, she will come under sustained bombardment over his D-Day snub – not least from Nigel Farage, says Sean O’Grady

With her naval connections and Portsmouth constituency, it will be difficult for Penny Mordaunt to feign sincerity when she passes on Rishi Sunak’s apology for his D-Day gaffe (PA Archive)

Spare a thought, if you can bear it, for Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House of Commons, naval reservist and one-time party leadership hopeful. Tonight, she will be on the TV debate panel of seven, standing in for the prime minister. She’ll be doing her duty, her own version of national service.

In a bizarre performance at the last Tory conference, she told the assembled septuagenarians and octogenarians to “stand up and fight”, irrespective, presumably, of dodgy knees and arthritic hips. This evening, she will have to do some unarmed combat herself, notably with Nigel Farage, the smuggest man in Britain right now; and Angela Rayner, recently victorious from her own tussle with the media. Mordaunt will come under some sustained bombardment.

How, then, will Mordaunt deal with what we may well learn to call D-Day-gate? This hideously embarrassing blunder has turned even worse thanks to the PM’s social media apology (not exactly the right touch), veteran outrage and the rumour that he never wanted to honour the heroes and the fallen in Normandy in the first place.

With her naval connections and Portsmouth constituency, it will be difficult for Mordaunt to feign sincerity when she passes on Sunak’s apology to the audience. She’s good at “doing serious” and, as we witnessed at the coronation, she has a dignified demeanour. When she has to deal with dolts such as Andrew Bridgen in the Commons, she treats them with polite, understated scorn.

But she really cannot win in this one. The very mention of the disrespect Sunak displayed to the greatest generation (well represented among remaining Tory voters) will provoke feelings of anger and betrayal across the studio, and probably in Mordaunt herself. Nothing she can say or do will assuage that, no matter how heartfelt she sounds. She cannot win.

She might not in fact be able to disguise her contempt for Sunak. Every week, she is parked near or next to Sunak at PMQs, and the collection of facial tics, eye rolls and smirks she goes through as he does his Head Boy routine doesn’t suggest adulation.

We may also recall that time when she gamely stepped in for a beleaguered Liz Truss, then PM, remarking oh-so-drily that “the prime minister is not hiding under a desk”.

Whether she can resist the temptation to subtly knife Sunak we shall soon see. One way or another, she will simply be unable to say words to the effect that: “Sure, I’d have done the same and ducked out to do a pre-record interview.”

With the Tories doomed, and her own chances of holding her constituency already slim, Mordaunt needs to put her duty to herself, her party and the country first. She should simply declare she’s no intention of defending the indefensible and that we all need to move on. Which, in every sense, we do.