In a victim impact statement read to the court, the former Conservative cabinet minister<\/a> said: “I am completely exhausted due to the stress, every time I step out of the building I am looking over my shoulder and checking to see if he is there.<\/p>\n “I am living in a constant fear of a confrontation. It’s hugely impacted all aspects of my life, both my professional life and personal life, and I cannot stress enough how much I am exhausted by it.”<\/p>\n Image: The court previously heard Dame Penny believed Brandt was a “real threat” and feared “sexual violence” because of his “creepy” behaviour.<\/p>\n The trial was told that Brandt sent at least 17 emails and three phone messages to Dame Penny, as well as turning up at her Portsmouth<\/a> constituency office out of hours between 11 September 2023 and 12 May 2024.<\/p>\n Brandt, who lived on the Isle of Wight<\/a> at the time, failed to comply with the terms of a conditional caution issued in April 2024, which required him to complete a victim awareness course and not to contact Dame Penny, the trial heard.<\/p>\n The divorced father of two then left two voicemail messages for her on 6 and 10 May, and in one of the messages, he said: “I am going to go on gently knocking at your door in order to shake your hand, I am not giving up.”<\/p>\n Sentencing Brandt, Judge William Mousley KC said: “I am satisfied that there is a real risk of you reoffending or causing harm to other people.”<\/p>\n He said it was clear that Brandt’s behaviour had a “very significant and enduring impact” on Dame Penny.<\/p>\n Brandt, who had worked as a professional sailor and used to be a Tory councillor for East Hampshire District Council, told the court that he wanted to shake Dame Penny’s hand, and that his intention was “entirely political and entirely harmless”.<\/p>\n Read more from Sky News: He was also sentenced for seven breaches of a stalking protection order in December 2025 by failing to notify police of devices capable of connecting to the internet and of the creation of accounts on Facebook and Snapchat.<\/p>\n The stalking protection order is in place until November 2034.<\/p>\n Brandt was handed 12 weeks in jail over the stalking offence and another eight to serve consecutively for the breaches of the order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Tory councillor has been jailed for 20 weeks after being found guilty of stalking ex-cabinet minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-373709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dame](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/skynews-penny-mordaunt-edward-brandt_7137377.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Dame Penny Mordaunt. Pic: PA<\/p>\n
Uganda election descends into deadly violence<\/a>
West Midlands Police chief retires after Maccabi fan ban row<\/a><\/p>\n