This time it’s not about Portsmouth having the highest number of forced prepaid meters or rejected blue badge applications for non-visible disabilities or impairments such as autism or certain neurological disorders.
It looks like the Guardian went to the high street in fairly fancy Cosham – which is on the mainland, not on Portsea Island – and asked random shoppers how they would vote. They also went to poorer Paulsgrove – also on the mainland – and spoke with candidates who aren’t Penny Mordaunt.
I’ve heard her speak at the Guildhall. I understand why people vote for her.
Did the Guardian actually manage to miss most of the constituency Portsmouth North? It starts at around New Road. That’s in the middle of Portsea Island.
Also, they should have taken a photo from the ridge (the cliffs over Cosham). That way you can get not only the Spinnaker Tower but almost all of Portsmouth in the shot, complete with its geographic location. You need good weather for it, but the weather on the south coast is almost always good.
Instead, they used a stock photo (Alamy) that’s was taken as far south as you can get in Portsmouth South.
If Portsmouth wasn’t so extremely insular, it would be a lovely place. Penny Mordaunt gets that insularity, too. Not only did she come across as seasoned* from the start, and highly capable, people there see her as “one of us”. That’s why they vote Conservative.
Her swimsuit stunt and the challenge she undertook of saying the word “cock” (dick, pecker, bell) as often as she could in a speech in Parliament, that appeals to many of the locals. It cemented her popularity.
She is local. She was in the Navy and her mother died of breast cancer when Penny was a teenager. She’s dyslexic, if I’m not mistaken.
She’s very appealing and she has matured enough for people to be able to see her as a future PM now. They would love that.
(Someone from self-declared underdog city Portsmouth as PM? Hell yes.)
(Even Boris Johnson has mentioned Portsmouth and described it as having nothing but a big drugs problem and too many Labour MPs. If anything that will have made people more determined to vote for Penny Mordaunt, won’t it?)
Go one town to the west (Fareham), and you run into Suella Braverman. Can you hear me sigh?
(*She worked on the elder Bush team in the States.)
I decided to look it up.
https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2007/04/04/boris-portsmouth-full-of-drugs-and-obesity/
Portsmouth never forgets.
The News: “Struggles with abstinence, weight loss, and fulfilling potential may be seen like a natural fit for Mr Johnson, who presided over a boozy culture at 10 Downing Street during the pandemic and declared himself as ‘too fat’ as he launched an anti-obesity campaign that would have a slim future.”
I’d actually love to live in Portsmouth, if it weren’t for its hostility and its unforgiving nature. I can never go back there, not even for a visit. They’d kill me. (As if that would be the only problem.)
