Newsletter #44: EXCLUSIVE. Penny Mordaunt eyes a return to frontline politics in Richmond and Northallerton

PLUS: James McMurdock suspended, and Rupert Lowe's new political vehicle

Good morning.

After no time at all, I’m back. Today, we return to the day-to-day politics that this newsletter was founded on, with stories on Penny Mordaunt (an exclusive!), Rupert Lowe, and James McMurdock.

This newsletter’s agenda: EXCLUSIVE: Penny Mordaunt eyes a return to frontline politics in Richmond and Northallerton (free); Rupert Lowe’s new political vehicle: not likely to be useful (paid); James McMurdock suspended from Reform UK (paid).

EXCLUSIVE: Penny Mordaunt eyes a return to frontline politics in Richmond and Northallerton

Penny Mordaunt, the former MP for Portsmouth North (2010-24), former Leader of the House of Commons (2022-24), two-time Tory leadership contender, and arch-wet, is on manoeuvres. Mordaunt, as most readers will know, lost her seat at the last General Election. In fact, despite the catastrophic performance of the Conservative Party, she was the only serious contender for the Tory leadership to do so. If she hadn’t lost her seat, Mordaunt was, in my view, highly likely to become the main leadership contender for the Tory wets, displacing Cleverly. Mordaunt, moreover, could definitely have won the membership vote, too. As we wrote last year:

Mordaunt is one of the most vapid Tory MPs out there, addicted to endless media rigmarole and pulling stunts. Despite (or perhaps because of?) this, she has built up a substantial following of sad Tory boys who are not-so-secretly turned on by the idea of being sexually dominated by a female Naval Reservist. She is also fairly Woke, albeit not quite Woke enough to find herself on Woke Tory Watch: in 2018, she proudly declared that ‘trans men are men, trans women are women’. She later rowed back from these comments, but her natural political instincts are clear enough. For those who wish the Conservative Party ill, she would be an ideal leader.

As a consequence of this, the Tory wets were deprived of their strongest internal party candidate, forced instead into backing the gaffe-prone and, frankly, rather incompetent James Cleverly. The rest, of course, is history.

Since then, what has Mordaunt been up to? The answer is, probably unsurprisingly, ‘not very much’. However, over the last few months or so, she’s been in the news a little more. She was made a dame in the King’s Birthday Honours. She took up a role advising British American Tobacco, joining their ‘Transformation Advisory Board’. And, perhaps most pertinently, she has already stated that she is seeking to stand for Parliament again at the next General Election.

Yesterday, one of my contacts told me that Mordaunt has bought a house in the constituency of Richmond and Northallerton. For those who don’t already know: Richmond and Northallerton is a seat in North Yorkshire. It is a predominantly rural seat, currently held by none other than Rishi Sunak. Sunak held the seat with a majority of 12,185 votes (25.1%), the largest margin of any Conservative seat in the entire country. Even aside from the personal vote for Sunak, which is admittedly somewhat distortive, it is the kind of seat that is very unlikely to be credibly threatened by Reform in the next election.

It should go without saying that Mordaunt’s real purpose here, given —so far as I can tell — her total lack of connection to the seat (she was born in Devon and grew up in Hampshire), is presumably to prepare for selection at the next General Election. This is, of course, a very early move, assuming that the next General Election takes place in 2028 or 2029, but obviously she wants to be as sure as possible of selection. However, is it also possible that she knows that Sunak will be stepping down at some point before the next election (thus triggering a by-election), perhaps due to inside information, possibly even from Sunak himself, and decided to move there well before others had the same idea? Who knows. Either way, she must be confident that Sunak is at least not likely to stand again to be relocating to somewhere so far away.

Assuming Mordaunt gets selected (and, given her popularity among the Tory membership to this day, I assume she will), and assuming that she wins the seat (and, given how safe it is and given that it is not very friendly to Reform, or indeed any other party, I assume she will), what will she be seeking to do? Will she be challenging for the leadership, whoever the leader may be at that time? Will she be forming a rival faction to create problems for Jenrick and other more right-wing MPs? It is hard to say for now. But what we can say is that this is certainly not a desirable thing to happen for the Conservative Party, who were very lucky to be rid of her thanks to the bad luck of her seat last election.

[UPDATE 08/07/2025 14:56. Penny Mordaunt has issued a very specific denial to Christian Calgie when asked. She says that it, and I quote, ‘remains untrue’ that she has purchased a home in the constituency. The nature of the denial (‘remains’ — who says that if they are making a real denial?) means that I stand by the basics of the reporting, as it strongly suggests that she is denying it entirely on a technicality (perhaps because the sale has not yet completed). In related news, Rishi Sunak has been appointed an advisor to Goldman Sachs today. Hmm….]

Rupert Lowe’s new political vehicle: not likely to be useful

On 30 June, Rupert Lowe finally launched his new political vehicle: Restore Britain. Restore Britain is not a party. Instead, it seeks to influence the political debate through gaining members from any and all political parties interested in the movement’s general principles (it will be interesting if Reform start threatening their members to not involve themselves, but so far as I am aware, this has not yet happened), and then pushing forward the movement’s general ideas through multiple channels. This is a good thing, since there was never much chance of a new party, as has previously been rumoured, finding any serious success. From what I have been told, it has already attracted a not-insignificant members, including of the so-called ‘Cromwell Club’, which costs £2,500 per year. They will have a fair amount of cash for now, and it might be swollen further by major donors. (Elon Musk?)

Much of what Restore Britain has put out thus far has focused on the need for ‘mass deportations’ of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals, which Lowe has repeatedly used to rhetorically distinguish himself from Farage. Beyond this, their posts so far have discussed:

• Net negative immigration, by ‘reversing’ the Boriswave, finding methods to remove certain undesirable foreign nationals.

• Banning the burqa.

• Restoring the death penalty.

• Defunding the BBC.

• Bringing back the castle doctrine.

• Ending school holiday fines.

• Scrapping IR35.

• Freeing ‘political prisoners’.

• That ‘sex is biological’

• Justice for the Batley Grammar School teacher.

• Abolishing non-crime hate incidents.

With the exception of the (admittedly popular) plan to scrap IR35, and the plan to ban the burqa (which I think is both pointless and oppose on libertarian grounds), this is not a bad list at all. Additionally, friend of Pimlico Journal David Starkey is involved, and Elon Musk himself seems to have endorsed it (and now he is out of government, he is presumably much more free to openly support it, including financially).

Lowe’s initial statement gave some further detail on the general principles behind the organisation, informing us that he wanted wanted a serious, detailed policy platform that is

…low tax, small state, slash immigration, [and will] protect British culture, restore Christian principles, carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery, fight lawfare, empower individual enterprise, and plenty more.

What’s not to like? Readers may be surprised that I am somewhat sceptical, despite what outwardly seems like a very, very good start. (And I promise that I’m not just being a contrarian…)

As an aside, on the very same day, Ben Habib launched his own new political vehicle, ‘Advance UK’. This, unsurprisingly, has gained much less traction (not least because of the bland, unmemorable name). I have been told that what happened was that Lowe — reasonably enough — refused to allow Habib to head the new organisation, which Habib took as an insult. He therefore decided to launch his own political vehicle, and even launched it on the very same day purely out of spite. Sometimes, I must confess, you have to sympathise with Nigel Farage. His two main contemporary detractors who are now out of Reform, and who seem to have almost identical policy concerns, are somehow still not capable of working together. Perhaps they just aren’t team players!

It is worth returning to my speculations about Lowe’s next move back in March. I wrote the following on the requirements for any Lowe-themed political vehicle (at the time under the assumption, from my sources, that it would be an actual political party) to succeed: