PENNY Mordaunt is to replace Priti Patel as the new minister at the Department for International Development.
The 44-year-old is, like Patel, a keen Brexiteer, who was a regular on the campaign trail during last year’s referendum.
The MP, who is a Royal Navy Reservist, and who has worked as a magician’s assistant has had a few brushes with notoriety since first being elected to represent Portsmouth North in 2010.
In 2014, while a junior minister in the MoD, she was a contestant on Tom Daley’s short-lived, prime-time Saturday night, ITV1, celebrity diving programme, Splash. She left the programme early after mis-timing a back somersault from 7.5m and belly flopping into the pool.
Later that year she was accused of trivialising Parliament when it was revealed that a speech she’d given on poultry welfare, where she’d said the word cock, six times, was a bet with colleagues in the Royal Navy reserves.
Perhaps more damningly she was accused of lying by David Cameron – despite being a member of his government.
He accused her of making “a very misleading claim” during the EU referendum after she said Turkey was going to join the EU and that Britain would not be able to stop the accession of other countries into the bloc.
However, that hasn’t stopped Mordaunt’s rise to one of the big jobs in politics.
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