After receiving a boost over his Cabinet rivals at the weekend with the endorsement of Amber Rudd, Jeremy Hunt has today used his official launch to unveil support from a senior Brexiteer. Penny Mordaunt has come out in support of the Foreign Secretary. Speaking at the launch in Westminster, the Defence Secretary said she trusted Hunt to deliver Brexit. Her endorsement is a coup for the Hunt campaign as it shows that he has support from a senior Brexiteer. Mordaunt’s endorsement is more significant in many respects than Rudd’s. This is because what Hunt’s campaign has been lacking is support from Brexiteers – his support is largely from MPs who voted Remain in the EU referendum.
Speaking at the launch, Hunt tried to press the idea that he was the right candidate for the job as he was a ‘serious leader’ for serious times. This appeared to be a dig at the current frontrunner Boris Johnson. However, when Hunt was pressed in the Q and A on who – if any – of his rivals could be described as not fitting into this description, he refused to divulge. On Brexit, he would not rule out a no deal Brexit – but left himself plenty of wriggle room with regards to extending Article 50 past October 31:
‘So without a deal any prime minister who promised to leave by a certain date would have to call a general election to change the parliamentary arithmetic. An election we would lose badly.
Because the lessons of the European and Peterborough elections are clear: if we fight an election before delivering Brexit, we will be annihilated. Squeezed by the Brexit party on the right and the Lib Dems on the left we simply allow Labour through the middle.
And if that happened nationally it would be the end of Brexit. Because whatever else a Labour government did – and I worry about all of it – it would never deliver Brexit. So we need to get real. We are facing a constitutional crisis.’
Hunt also used the Q and A to try and neutralise a growing row over his view on abortion. After the Tory leadership contender said over the weekend that his ‘personal view’ was that the legal time limit for an abortion should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12, he insisted that ‘no government I lead will ever seek to change the law on abortion.’
So, where does this leave the Hunt campaign? It was a smooth launch which confirmed Hunt’s place as the reliable Cabinet candidate. This week Hunt’s supporters are all rather chipper – they know that Michael Gove’s negative press boosts their candidate’s chances. It follows that when it comes to the second place in the final two (which could be described as the spot for the Cabinet candidate), Hunt is the frontrunner. However, today’s launch did serve as a reminder of the difficulties Hunt would face appealing to the Tory grassroots against a candidate like Boris Johnson. His Brexit policy is not simple – and is likely to stoke concerns that under a PM Hunt the UK could still be in the EU come November.
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