Penny Mordaunt ‘only one in her family to support Brexit’, says uncle

Tory leadership hopeful with Irish roots has stayed silent on Northern Ireland protocol bill

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Penny Mordaunt has Irish Catholic roots, it has emerged, but her staunch support for Brexit makes her an outlier not just among many of those with Irish heritage but among her extended family.

She is the only member of the family - brothers, father, uncles, cousins and others - that supported Brexit," her uncle Henry Mordaunt said as he revealed that the family's Catholic ancestors fled England and moved to Ireland, possibly to escape religious persecution after Henry VIII's Reformation.