Carlos FresnedaLondon Correspondent

London Correspondent

Updated Sunday, March 17, 2024-15:37

  • The Portrait Penny Mordaunt: the captain of the Tory bases

Several deputies from the right wing of the Conservative Party have launched a plot to try to "dethrone"

Rishi Sunak

and "crown" Penny Mordaunt as leader of the "Tories", in the midst of the countdown to the general elections next autumn.

Mordaunt, 50, catapulted to fame for her role as sword bearer during the coronation of Charles III, is considered in a recent poll as the

Conservative Party's most likely rival

to Labor's Keir Starmer.

The news has provoked an angry reaction from prominent members of the party, such as veteran

David Davis

: "We have to fight these elections together and stop fighting among ourselves."

Hard-line MP

Jacob Rees-Mogg

has joined in criticizing the new manoeuvres: "Changing prime minister again would be very destructive for the Tories."

According to

The Daily Mail

, in the last week there have been conversations between deputies from the hard wing and the moderate faction of the party in the face of the recent fiascos of Rishi Sunak and the stagnation of the Conservative Party, twenty points away in the polls and with the growing threat from Reform UK from the right.

The moves have been compared to the removal of

Iain Duncan Smith

as Tory leader in 2003 and the fast-track "coronation" of Michael Howard over fears of an electoral debacle.

The growing unrest within the party resulted in

a new wave of letters demanding a vote of no confidence

against Sunak.

The strategy of the authors of the plot, if the number of letters exceeded the bar of the 53 "Tory" deputies and a vote was forced, would be the designation of Penny Mordaunt as "unity candidate."

Penny Mordaunt was the third contender in the contest between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to succeed Boris Johnson.

Despite her popularity within the party and her role as parliamentary spokesperson for the Sunak Government, Mordaunt is not seen favorably in the hard wing due to her permissiveness towards the rights of "trans" and critical position from it to Israel.