George Freeman: Why I am backing Penny Mordaunt
5 min read
When the YouGov poll dropped this week showing Penny Mordaunt as the overwhelming favourite of the Tory membership, many commentators were surprised.
Even the most hardened lobby veterans, who’ve seen all the shocks in Westminster come and go, seemed blindsided by the astonishing rise of Penny who is set to overturn all conventional Westminster wisdom. But some of us who have followed and been part of Penny’s journey weren’t surprised at all. We have long seen this moment coming.
The commentators have missed a trick. In 2017, after the divisions and fallout of the Brexit vote, a group of us came together to start a new movement to move on from the civil war and political deadlock over the Brexit referendum, with a shared conviction that we needed to unite around a positive vision of Brexit as an inspiring moment of national renewal.
It grew out of the 2020 Conservatives and the One Nation Group, bringing together a new generation of us elected to Parliament in 2010 and determined to avoid the referendum becoming an ongoing fault line in the Conservative Party as Europe had been for the previous 20 years.
We didn’t want to launch another SW1 dining club or secret society of ideological brothers, but a shared movement committed to bringing different tribes together to find the common ground of shared values. And above all, be open and inclusive about the diversity of political causes, crusades and challenges that inspire and motivate us and use that openness to reach out to a new generation of non/tribal voters. We called it big tent conservatism.
Brexiteer and social justice campaigner, patriot and pioneer – Penny has demonstrated leadership on the world stage at the very highest levels of government
At its heart were two key projects: the Big Tent Ideas Festival (launched in 2017 in a field in Reading) and our book Britain Beyond Brexit – written by 30 MPs from all wings of the Conservative Party, setting out how the breadth and diversity of new generation Conservatism is linked by some core pillars.
The 30 contributors to that new blue book have made up the majority of candidates in the last two leadership elections. It includes Penny Mordaunt, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Kwasi Kwarteng, Jesse Norman and many more.
The central insight of Britain Beyond Brexit and the Big Tent festival was simple. We believed in the politics of unity and positivity over division. We weren’t interested in wedge issues or dividing lines, but in reconciling the patriotism of the Brexiteers with the social justice mission of the one nation wing, a fusion that has always sustained and nourished the very best Conservative governments.
This big tent Toryism wasn’t a project of the cities or rural areas but a truly national project. The 30 MPs in the book are from North and South, East and West, Brexit and Remain, left and right of the Conservative Party. Since 2017, we have held Big Tent festivals in Bristol, Coventry and digitally taken the message of big tent politics around the country to talk properly with community leaders, entrepreneurs, citizens and the new generation of voters for whom the 80s is ancient history.
In Britain Beyond Brexit we set out how to reconcile the divisions within the party through a new big tent conservatism.
As Penny wrote in that collection: "Global Britain is not just a chance to re-establish our relationship with parts of the world beyond Europe’s borders, but also with our own nation too. To reconnect the British public with what they enable and what we together stand for and make them proud of their country. Global Britain was as much about a domestic outlook as it was about our ambitions on the world stage.”
Big tent Toryism brings together all the best parts of the Conservative tradition: the individual and the communitarian; the pro-enterprise spirit with a deep compassion and concern for social justice; a global outlook with domestic renewal. It also concentrates on the need to build a team, not just among the party but with every sector and every part of the United Kingdom and the need to modernise to deliver. As Penny says, our leadership style must change too. It needs to become a little less on the leader and a lot more about the ship.
No one embodies that spirit of big tent Toryism more than Penny herself. From her phenomenal back story, to her service in our armed forces and pioneering work as International Development Secretary and the first female Defence Secretary. Showing how patriotism is forward-looking and how strong defence and security goes hand in hand with compassion to the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Brexiteer and social justice campaigner, patriot and pioneer – Penny has demonstrated leadership on the world stage at the very highest levels of government.
Fundamentally, she’s both a pragmatist and an optimist and recognises that if our country has a fault then it’s concentrating on the negative. We need a fresh start based on freedom, fairness, courage and compassion and taking personal responsibility.
Perhaps the Westminster pundits missed it because this movement wasn’t incubated in the bars and dining rooms of Parliament. It was developed out on the frontline of national renewal beyond the beltway.
To win a landmark fifth consecutive general election in 2024 we need that big tent, reaching out to voters across the length and breadth of our land. Penny is the only candidate who can do that, appealing both to party members and to voters.
She is the standout candidate who can heal the wounds of the last few years and get our party back to united and winning ways and make Brexit the inspiring moment of renewal people voted for. That is why Penny Mordaunt must be our next Prime Minister.
George Freeman is the Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk.
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