Who is Penny Mordaunt, the ex-magician’s assistant looking to conjure up victory in PM race?
Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader and a former magician’s assistant, will be looking to conjure up the necessary support and pull victory out of a hat in her second bid to become prime minister.
Ms Mordaunt, who has earned a reputation as a competent performer at the despatch box, has said she would “keep calm and carry on” and urged others to do the same after Liz Truss’s resignation.
Popular with Tory activists, she has long nurtured prime ministerial ambitions, fellow MPs claim, relentlessly working the “rubber chicken circuit” of charity dinners and party events to court the grassroots since being elected to her Portsmouth North seat in 2010.
Ms Mordaunt, who has held cabinet posts, including defence secretary, ran to replace Boris Johnson in the first Conservative leadership race with the pithy slogan PM 4 PM.
During that campaign, the Royal Navy reservist, said leadership “needs to become a little less about the leader and a lot more about the ship”.
She came third, narrowly missing out on a place in the head-to-head stage, in which she backed Ms Truss over Rishi Sunak.
Named after the Navy cruiser HMS Penelope
Although she has previously faced accusations about her lack of profile outside politics, this changed after the Queen’s death when as Lord President of the Council she played a central role in proceedings in which Charles was proclaimed King.
Born in Torquay in March 1973, Ms Mordaunt’s history with the Armed Forces goes back to day one – when she says she was named after the Navy cruiser HMS Penelope.
Her father John served in the Parachute Regiment before retraining as a teacher and youth worker, and her mother Jennifer worked as a special needs teacher.
She grew up in Hampshire with her twin brother James and younger brother Edward.
Penny Mordaunt was the UK’s first-ever female defence secretary
When she was 15 her mother died of breast cancer and she became her younger brother’s primary carer until her father remarried when she was 18.
On leaving home, she went to Romania for a gap year during which she worked in orphanages and hospitals after the 1989 revolution that toppled the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.
Crediting those experiences with wanting to go into politics, she returned to the UK to study philosophy at the University of Reading, where she became president of the students’ union.
To fund her studies, she worked in a Johnson & Johnson factory and as a magician’s assistant to the president of the Portsmouth Magical Society and British Ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Worked on presidential campaign
She subsequently worked on George W Bush’s presidential campaigns and was a Conservative party staffer during William Hague’s leadership before branching out into the charity sector.
Winning the Portsmouth North constituency from Labour in 2010, one of her first claims to fame was an appearance on Tom Daley’s reality TV diving show Splash in 2014.
Told by judges she had the “elegance and drive of a paving slab” and criticised by her Labour rivals for not focusing on her day job, she claimed she did it so she could donate most of her £10,000 fee to saving a lido in her constituency.
She also raised eyebrows for a Commons speech in which she squeezed in repeated references to a rude word in a speech about poultry welfare – said to be part of a military bet – leading to accusations of “trivialising parliament”.
On Tom Daley’s reality TV diving show Splash in 2014. Pic: ITV/Shutterstock
As a minister for local government, she caused further controversy when she got into a row with the Fire Brigades Union, which claimed she had “misled MPs” over assurances that firefighters would not have their pensions reduced if they failed fitness tests.
The dispute resulted in strike action.
A prominent Brexiteer, during the 2016 EU referendum campaign she made headlines for falsely claiming during an interview that the UK would not be able to stop Turkey from becoming a member of the bloc.
In 2017 when Priti Patel was forced to resign as international development secretary over undeclared meetings with Israeli officials, Ms Mordaunt replaced her.
She added women and equalities minister to her brief in 2018.
That year she was applauded in the Commons for being the first MP to ever use sign language at the despatch box.
The MP campaigned with Boris Johnson for Brexit
She made history again in 2019 when Theresa May made her the UK’s first-ever female defence secretary.
But she only served for 85 days before Boris Johnson punished her for backing his rival Jeremy Hunt in the Tory leadership contest and demoted her.
Last year she published a book outlining her hopes for post-Brexit Britain.
Ms Mordaunt said it was only through writing it that she realised she was dyslexic and was formally diagnosed.
Trans rights criticism
She has also come under scrutiny over her record on trans rights and self-identification, with critics accusing her of being “too woke”.
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‘A woman like me doesn’t have a Willie’
While serving as women and equalities minister, she publicly stated that “trans women are women and trans men are men”.
She also came under fire for opting to replace the words “woman” and “mother” with “person” in maternity leave legislation.
‘I am biologically a woman’
However, she had also faced claims she has abandoned her support of the trans community for the sake of her political career.
At her previous campaign launch she said: “I am a woman, I am biologically a woman.
“And I can tell you that if you have been in the Royal Navy and competed against men, you understand the biological difference between men and women.”
During the bitter leadership contest, Ms Mordaunt had doubt cast on her ministerial commitment by her own boss.
She later joked she was “amazed” to be back at the Commons despatch box given her “reported work ethic”.
A member of the British Astronomical Association, she has four Burmese cats.
She will now be looking to magic a win in her second tilt at the leadership and ensure her campaign does not end up a vanishing act.
World
‘At least 798 killed’ at Gaza aid points – as medical charity warns acute malnutrition at all-time high
At least 798 people in Gaza have reportedly been killed while receiving aid in the past six weeks – while acute malnutrition is said to have reached an all-time high.
The UN human rights office said 615 of the deaths – between 27 May and 7 July – were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” said Ravina Shamdasani, from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Its figures are based on a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries, and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), its partners on the ground, and Hamas-run health authorities.
Aid agency Project Hope said on Thursday that 10 children were among at least 15 people killed as they waited for its clinic in Deir al Balah to open.
Ten children were reportedly killed when Israel attacked near a clinic on Thursday. Pic: AP
The GHF has claimed the UN figures are “false and misleading” and has repeatedly denied any violence at or around its sites.
Meanwhile, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said two of its sites were seeing their worst-ever levels of severe malnutrition.
Cases at its Gaza City clinic are said to have tripled from 293 in May to 983 in early July.
“Over 700 pregnant or breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children are now receiving emergency nutritional care,” MSF said.
The humanitarian medical charity said food prices were at extreme levels, with sugar at $766 (£567) per kilo and flour $30 (£22) per kilo, and many families surviving on one meal of rice or lentils a day.
It’s a major concern for the estimated 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, who risk miscarriage, stillbirth and malnourished infants because of the shortages.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the coastal territory.
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US aid contractors claim live ammo fired at Palestinians
It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip.
The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.
The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what it says is a suspicious manner.
It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies from falling into the hands of militants.
Read more:
GHF aid distribution linked to increased deaths
Gaza situation ‘apocalyptic’, says UN expert
After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
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In response, a GHF spokesperson said: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”
The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
At least 798 people in Gaza have been killed while receiving aid in six weeks, the UN human rights office has said.
A spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said 615 of the killings were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
The office said its figures are based on numbers from a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as NGOs, its partners on the ground and the Hamas-run health authorities.
The GHF has claimed the figures are “false and misleading”. It has repeatedly denied there has been any violence at or around its sites.
The organisation began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the enclave.
It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip. The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.
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US aid contractors claim live ammo fired at Palestinians
The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what they say is a suspicious manner.
It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies falling into the hands of militants.
Read more:
GHF aid distribution linked to increased deaths
Gaza situation ‘apocalyptic’, says UN expert
After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
In response, a GHF spokesperson told the Reuters news agency: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”
The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
Ten children and two women are among at least 15 killed in an airstrike near a Gaza health clinic, according to an aid organisation.
Project Hope said it happened this morning near Altayara Junction, in Deir al Balah, as patients waited for the clinic to open.
The organisation’s president called it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza“.
“No child waiting for food and medicine should face the risk of being bombed,” added the group’s project manager, Dr Mithqal Abutaha.
“It was a horrific scene. People had to come seeking health and support, instead they faced death.”
Operations at the clinic – which provides a range of health and maternity services – have been suspended.
Some of the children were reportedly waiting to receive nutritional supplements, necessary due to the dire shortage of food being allowed into Gaza.
Israel‘s military is investigating and said it was targeting a militant who took part in the 7 October terror attack.
“The IDF [Israel Defence Force] regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible,” added.
The deaths come as an agreement over a 60-day truce hangs in the balance – with President Trump cautiously saying it could happen “this week, or next week”.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the Nasser Hospital reported another 21 deaths in airstrikes in Khan Younis and in the nearby coastal area of Muwasi.
It said three children and their mother were among the dead.
Israel said its troops have been dismantling more than 130 Hamas infrastructure sites in Khan Younis over the past week, including missile launch sites, weapons storage facilities and a 500m tunnel.
On Wednesday, a soldier was shot dead when militants burst out of a tunnel and tried to abduct him, the military added.
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Do Trump and Netanyahu really get along?
Eighteen soldiers have been killed in the past three weeks – one of the deadliest periods for the Israeli army in months.
A 22-year-old Israeli man was also killed on Thursday by two attackers in a supermarket in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the Magen David Adom emergency service.
People on site reportedly shot and killed the attackers but information on their identity has so far not been released.
Read more:
IDF chief says conditions ‘created’ for Gaza ceasefire
What is the possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal ?
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Lack of food and water ‘lethal’ for Gaza children
Negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire are ongoing and President Trump reportedly put “heavy” pressure on Israel’s leader, who visited the US this week.
A major sticking point is said to be the status of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) inside Gaza during the 60-day ceasefire and beyond, should it last longer.
However, Sky News understands the Israeli government thinks the chances of a permanent truce are “questionable”.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
More than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war – more than half are women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.
Its figure does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
The war began in October 2023 after Hamas killed around 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 251 others.
Some of them remain In Gaza and are a crucial part of ceasefire negotiations, which also include a planned surge in humanitarian aid into the strip.
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