Penny Mordaunt has emerged as a top candidate to take over leadership from both the Conservative Party and the UK in the ongoing Tory leadership race to succeed Boris Johnson. However, former Brexit secretary Lord Frost expressed doubts about Mrs Mordaunt’s suitability to lead when he discussed his personal experience with the Secretary of State for International Trade. The peer said he had “big reservations” about her ability to “make tough decisions” while questioning her track record in Brexit negotiations with the European Union.
Lord Frost told TalkTV: “I’ve worked with Penny. To be honest, I’m quite surprised she’s where she is in this leadership race.
“She was my deputy, more fictitiously than real, in the Brexit talks last year. I felt she had not mastered the details needed in the negotiations.
“She wouldn’t always deliver hard messages to the European Union when needed. I’m afraid she wasn’t fully responsible, fully exposed.
“Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was and I’m afraid this became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the Prime Minister to move her and find someone else to support me.”
He continued: “You have to remember that this was a time when we were in a big showdown over Northern Ireland, it was extremely difficult.
“I’m afraid we didn’t just get what we needed.
“When you’re prime minister, you have to take responsibility, you have to be able to control the machine, you have to be able to make difficult decisions, convey difficult messages.
“Anyone can say that in videos with I promise you my country, but it’s what you do in practice…”
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