It’s not been the best of times for the One Nation Tories. Yesterday Andrea Jenkyns – deputy chair of the European Research Group – launched a full-frontal attack on the caucus, telling that GB News:
This One Nation Group make up the majority of the parliamentary party, but these are the ones who didn’t want Brexit, who didn’t want Boris, who didn’t want Liz Truss — so they’re not really in tune with the British public… I don’t think the Tory party are going far enough [to the right] actually. If you look at the group, they’ve never accepted Liz [Truss], they never accepted Boris and it’s about time that we started having policies that were in our manifesto and that speak to the people.
So at last night’s Conservative Voice event, it was the turn of Penny Mordaunt to respond. The Leader of the House was asked by one audience member about Tory infighting and the Portsmouth MP gave a typically robust reply. ‘I don’t have time for people that say you’re the wrong type of Conservative,’ she told the crowd. Positioning herself as a ‘pragmatic Conservative’, she continued:
I believe we are best when we’re not ideologues… When you go to my end of the Tea Room here, we’re talking about the impact we make on people’s lives. Going to the other end of the table, and they’re talking about political philosophy and dogma.
Mordaunt then turned her attention to the Prime Minister and his team’s communication skills:
No. 10 put out a video marking the anniversary that the PM came in. And I didn’t retweet it. I didn’t retweet it because on his list of things that he’s done – the CPTPP, the Windsor Framework, a long-term plan for the NHS — those are all very important things and they are difficult things to get done. But they don’t mean anything to the people I represent. We’ve done a lot that does mean a lot to the people I represent. So this is about communication. It’s about delivery.
Let’s hope they’re listening in No. 10…
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