Penny Mordaunt who played starring role at coronation ousted by Labour

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt is one of the prominent Tory figures to have lost her seat to Labour.

Labour’s Amanda Martin ousted Ms Mordaunt from Portsmouth North, winning by just 780 votes.

Ms Mordaunt, 51, would have been hotly tipped to run for the party leadership again had she managed to hang on as an MP.

She already has two failed bids to secure the Tory crown, having lost to Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak.

Ms Mordaunt – a former magician’s assistant – went viral for carrying two heavy swords at the King’s coronation, dressed in a custom-made teal outfit with a matching cape and headband with gold feather embroidery.

As Lord President of the Council, she was responsible for bearing the Sword of State and presenting the Jewelled Sword of Offering to Charles – the first time the duty had been carried out by a woman.

She was hailed as stealing the show and later disclosed she did press ups in preparation and practised with weighted replicas.

The Navy reservist became an MP in 2010 and was made the UK’s first female defence secretary in 2019, but was bumped from the role into more junior positions by Boris Johnson after 85 days in a reshuffle.

Ms Mordaunt branded Mr Sunak’s heavily criticised decision to leave the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations early as “completely wrong” during the election campaign.

“What happened was completely wrong and the Prime Minister has rightly apologised for that, apologised to veterans but also to all of us, because he was representing all of us,” she said.

She took part in a seven-way TV election debate, where she clashed with Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner in heated exchanges over tax, NHS waiting lists, and the push for net zero.

Ms Mordaunt repeated the claim made by Mr Sunak that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 if elected, prompting Ms Rayner to accuse her of lying.

Born in Torquay in Devon, Ms Mordaunt is the daughter of a paratrooper and a special needs teacher.

Her mother died of breast cancer when she was 15 while her father was diagnosed with cancer when she was a teenager.

A University of Reading graduate, she worked on George W Bush’s presidential campaigns and was a Conservative party staffer during William Hague’s leadership.

Elected in the Portsmouth North constituency in 2010, one of her first claims to fame was an appearance on reality TV diving show Splash in 2014.

In 2013, she gave a House of Commons speech in which she squeezed in repeated references to a rude word in a speech about poultry welfare – said to be part of a bet.

An ardent Leaver, during the 2016 EU referendum campaign she faced accusations of untruths after claiming that the UK would not be able to stop Turkey joining the EU.

That claim came back to haunt her during the campaign to replace Mr Johnson, but she doubled down, saying: “There is a provision for a veto but we could not have used it because David Cameron gave an undertaking that he would support their accession and having given that undertaking to a Nato country, he would not have been able to walk away.”

It was not the only part of her record that faced scrutiny, with some Tory MPs accusing Ms Mordaunt of being “too woke” on issues of trans rights and self-identification.

Former Brexit minister Lord Frost labelled Ms Mordaunt as “absent on parade” when he worked with her on post-Brexit negotiations.