Penny Mordaunt made jokes about the Labour Party, HS2 and parliament’s Etonians at a speech to a think tank’s Christmas Party last night.
Ms Mordaunt was guest of honour at the Adam Smith Institute’s annual festive gathering, being introduced by former Cabinet Minister Nadhim Zahawi who became the organisation’s Director earlier this year.
The sword-wielding Leader of the Commons said she had turned up to “bring you some hope, some confidence in our preparedness, a little bit of joy and Christmas love, which as you all know are the themes of advent”.
She drew laughter from the audience while joking about new advent calendars being sold by Parliament’s gift shop.
She said: “It is not too late to get an advent calendar if you’ve not got one already, and I’m just going to give a quick plug – if you don’t mind – the House of Commons’ gift shop.
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“We have some lovely discounted advent calendars: we have an HS2 calendar – I don’t recommend it, it’s very overpriced and it only has enough chocolate to get you through to the second week of advent!
“We have a Labour Autumn Statement advent calendar, which looks fabulous but on closer inspection, there are no numbers.
“But my favourite and my recommendation to you is a creative collaboration by all the old Etonions in parliament: it looks like an ordinary advent calendar but all the doors have been opened for you by your dad.”
She thanked the right-wing free-market think tank for their “incredibly important work”, but said the Government has more to do when it comes to cutting taxes.
Ms Mordaunt listed some changes the Government must focus on, including reforming business rates, VAT and personal taxation thresholds and reducing taxes on capital and transactions.
She said: “We need to accelerate our regulatory reform… we’ve got to pick up the pace on that and end market distortions, because we don’t just need growth in the UK, we need to lift other nations out of poverty too and that is the way to do it.
“There are masses of opportunities out there, we have got to capitalise on that. We’ve got to pick up the pace and we’ve got to make use of the incredible demand that is out there from the general public now.”
She warned attendees that “next year is going to be a critical year”, in yet another hint the election will take place in 2024 rather than January 2025.
