From Private Pike to Britannia: Penny Mordaunt is a breath of fresh air at the MoD
Gavin Williamson lived by the leak and died by the leak. When his house of cards collapsed, the man who aspired to be an Urquhart or an Underwood, but looked more like Private Pike, turned out to be just a “stupid boy” after all. On the eve of difficult local elections, he chose to go down in flames rather than to resign quietly, doing maximum damage in his fall to the party and the Prime Minister to whom he owed his rise.
There was a reason why Williamson was unpopular in Whitehall and Westminster with almost everyone except his favourite lobby journalists. He could not see a back without stabbing it — but he left his fingerprints all over the crime.
Such amateurish skulduggery went hand in hand with a taste for theatrical gestures. They invariably backfired. It went down well at a party conference to compare the European Union with the Soviet Union, but to anyone old enough to recall the latter, he merely seemed ignorant and inept. After the Salisbury poisonings he sounded the wrong note, too, with his petulant remark: “Frankly, Russia should go away, and it should shut up.”
It was China rather than Russia that did for him in the end. After more sabre-rattling — including an implausible threat to deploy HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s brand new aircraft carrier, to the South China Sea, just as the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, set off for Beijing— Williamson decided to take on Huawei. The Chinese technology giant is indeed an arm of Chinese foreign policy, but leaking sensitive information from the National Security Council was not the way to halt its ambitions. His ineptitude leaves Huawei victorious in the battle for control of the next generation of communications.
Penny Mordaunt is a breath of fresh air at the Ministry of Defence. Not only is she the first woman to be Secretary of State for Defence: she is also the first person in the job to have served in the armed forces (the Royal Naval Reserve) since Tom (now Lord) King, who left office in 1992. Despite her relative youth, she actually has more military experience than her last dozen predecessors.
By contrast with Williamson’s deviousness, she comes across as an honest, no-nonsense minister whose martial background gives her a natural rapport with the armed forces. This is the job she has always wanted and she will throw herself into it with an infectious enthusiasm.
At International Development Ms Mordaunt had already found an ingenious way to get her hands on units of the Royal Navy. In order to deploy warships on humanitarian missions, she offered to pay for them from DfID’s budget, thereby relieving the cash-strapped MoD. Unlike Williamson, Penny Mordaunt looks the part of the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy. And because she is popular with colleagues and with the public, she will doubtless gain the confidence, not only of the service chiefs, but also of the poor bloody infantry.
The task that faces the new Defence Secretary is, however, daunting. Not only does Britain face threats from Russia and China, but she will also have her work cut out to hold Nato together. Ms Mordaunt’s top priority must be to ensure that Brexit, however it plays out, does not undermine the alliance. The United States will as always be the key, and she will need all her skill to build a good relationship with the Trump administration. The Pentagon still only has an acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan.
Penny Mordaunt now has the opportunity to play a crucial leadership role in avoiding a transatlantic rift over defence, intelligence and security. Britannia no longer rules the waves, but she can still calm them. If Downing Street and the Treasury will give her the tools, our jaunty new Defence Secretary is more than equal to the job.
