Dominic Lawson: Controversial meeting that shows it’s time to torpedo HMS Mordaunt

sometimes it seems penny mordaunt wants us to salute him. He has built his campaign for the leadership of conservative Partyand to be successful boris johnson As Prime Minister, on his affinity with the Armed Forces and his relationship with the Royal Navy (he is an Honorary Captain).

Mordant links her launch speech to the Falklands conflict (which happened when she was nine years old) and her campaign video contains 13 references to the armed forces.

She declared that she understood the government’s responsibility to support the armed services ‘probably better than any other candidate’. This came as news for one of the other candidates, Tom Tugendhat, who had served Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was wounded in battle.

As for the claim of his main supporter, Conservative MP George Freeman, that Mordaunt had ‘fight in the navy’, this was absolutely false.

misleaders

A highly decorated former Navy officer told the Mail on Saturday: ‘He’s not’ [currently] A trained or paid reservist, she has never been qualified or commissioned. She’s been beating the naval drums for days, and that’s enough. How he has presented himself – and how he has allowed himself to be presented – is very confusing.’

There is another reason that members of the Royal Navy may regard Mordant’s candidacy and its tone with a high degree of skepticism, and it stems from a tweet, who was then a minister in the Cabinet Office, which was published on 19 February last year. Was placed. ,

He tweeted, “Great to meet @ZaraMO1 today, wishing them success and learning more about their plans. ‘Look forward to working with him and his team.’

ZaraMO1 is Zara Mohamed, and her ‘team’ is the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), of which she was appointed General Secretary a few weeks ago. But why should it be a problem that Mordant had enthusiastically tweeted about his meeting with Ms. Mohamed?

Simply put: since 2009, it has been the policy of the British Governments to have no official contact with the Muslim Council of Britain.

In March of the same year, the Deputy Director General of the MCB, Dr Dawood Abdullah – along with 89 other ‘Muslim leaders’ around the world, signed the so-called Istanbul Declaration, which called on Muslims to attempt to attack any foreign navy. did. Hamas (designated a terrorist organization by the British government) to curb arms smuggling as it fought against Israel.

This set a series of ‘obligations’ on Muslims around the world, one of whom warned of ‘closing the crossing’. [to Gaza]Or the prevention of the entry of weapons through them, should be regarded as high treason in the Islamic nation, and clear support for the Zionist enemy’.

At the time, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered the Royal Navy resources to stop arms smuggling to Hamas fighters. But the declaration, signed by the Deputy Director General of the MCB, declared that ‘there was an obligation for the Islamic nation to send foreign warships into Muslim waters, to control the borders and claim to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza’, one of the A declaration of war in the form, a new occupation, a sinful invasion’.

It concluded that ‘it must be rejected and contested by all means’.

Given that there was a call for Muslims in this country (as well as around the world) to attack any Royal Navy ships obstructing arms supplies to Hamas, it was not surprising that the Labor government announced That she will break all ties with MCB.

Perhaps this would not have happened if the organization had apologized for, or rejected Dr. Abdullah’s signing of the Istanbul Declaration. The MCB refused, eventually claiming that its deputy director general had signed it in a ‘personal capacity’.

But the Brown administration pointed out that the only reason for Hamas to sign Dr Abdullah was because he was a prominent figure in the body that claimed to represent all British Muslims (not so, but that’s another matter).

Furious

The MCB never backed down, which helps explain why every government has followed a policy of ‘zero official engagement’.

So it won’t surprise you to learn that Downing Street was furious when it learned of Penny Mordaunt’s meeting with the new head of MCB and its promotion. Number 10 issued a statement declaring: ‘The UK Government has a longstanding policy of not engaging with MCB, and this has not changed.’

I have since established, after speaking to an official over the weekend, that Number 10 asked Mordant to delete his tweet. He refused – even after Downing Street reminded him that our embargo stemmed from a threat to the Royal Navy.

Publicly, her office claimed that she had not met the MCB chief as a minister but as ‘MP from a constituency’. Only, the point is that MCB’s head office is in London and Ms. Mohamed lives in Scotland – a far cry from the Portsmouth constituency of Mordant. Of course, the MCB pretended to meet the minister with their chief, retweeting Mordant’s announcement of their meeting and welcoming Ms. Mohamed.

As one British officer told me when I raised it with him yesterday: ‘I wonder how the Royal Navy colleagues of Penny Mordant felt when they made an agreement not to meet with representatives of an organization whose vice- The Director General had called for attacks on his ships, which may have killed some of our sailors.’

I suspect that Mordant’s intention at the time was to change government policy. It is very likely that she was enthused by the idea of ​​a woman taking charge of the MCB.

He fits in with the view expressed in his book Greater: Britain After the Storm, that ‘the problem is that most of our leaders come from a narrow background’ which Mordant defined as: ‘Men … heterosexual, white, Christian, Western Oriented’.

His campaign for Tory party leadership does not sound that note – wisely, given the nature of the electorate – but a great deal of leadership is ‘more about the ship than the captain’ and praises of ‘teamwork’. To do.

Lightweight

What kind of team player was Mordant, first, ignoring the long-agreed policy of not engaging with the MCB, and then refusing calls from the team captain’s (Boris Johnson) office to remove that self-promotion. Tweet about his meeting with Ms. Mohamed?

It is indeed possible that Mordant was unaware of this official ban, although it is well established and even though, as a former Secretary of State for Defense – and especially as a Royal Navy Reservist – it would seem unbelievable. Maybe she didn’t know.

The truth is that Penny Mordent is someone who has an extraordinarily weak understanding of policy or detail. This is something that several of his former ministerial colleagues have pointed out recently.

This characteristic became abundantly clear in an interview he gave to the Daily Telegraph last week. It has promised two big tax cuts – halving the VAT on fuel and raising the bulk of the personal tax limit at the rate of inflation.

So, he was asked (obviously): ‘How much will it cost?’ Mordaunt had no clue and, after fumbling for an answer, asked a colleague to ‘provide’ [the figure] Later’.

He was then questioned about his pledge to ‘lead solid money, with a key fiscal rule to ensure that debt as a percentage of GDP falls over time’.

Naturally, the interviewer asked if she could say what the national debt as a percentage of GDP is, and what she would like it to fall. Again, not Scooby Doo (‘I didn’t get it in front of me’).

It’s terrible that last week such a light Conservative lead became the bookies’ favorite to win. I’m sure many in the armed forces share that sentiment, despite the heightened claims of Penny Mordaunt being its candidate.