All Over? Boris Johnson is in a strong position but not an unstoppable one.

The first round of voting for the Conservative Party leadership today delivered an apparently decisive result. Boris Johnson topped the poll with 114 votes. Jeremy Hunt was a long way back on 43 votes. Michael Gove came in just behind him on 37 votes. Four other candidates registered enough support to survive the “cut.” They were Dominic Raab on 27 votes, Sajid Javid on 23 votes, Matt Hancock on 20 votes and Rory Stewart on 19 votes. Three of the initial contenders – Andrea Leadsom, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – were eliminated. The not-so Magnificent Seven can still be reduced further if any one of them decides to withdraw before 1pm tomorrow. The second ballot will occur on Tuesday and additional rounds will take place on Wednesday and Thursday to ensure that by then there are just two names who will be presented to the wider membership for their decision.
It would now take a political earthquake to occur in the next week if Mr Johnson were not one of those final candidates. While not impossible, this is obviously unlikely. He is running (or he is being run by others) in a tight risk-averse manner designed to minimise his chances of electoral self-harm. He faces a difficult imminent choice as to whether to stick with that strategy and avoid the television debates that are scheduled for this weekend, risking the charge that he is not treating other candidates with sufficient respect, or take part in them and open himself up to attack.
His strong performance in the first stage of this election represents an astonishing turnaround. Three months ago his prospects of becoming Prime Minister appeared to be dead in the water. Even his closest supporters could not see how he would win enough backing from MPs to reach the last two. He himself did not appear to be especially disturbed by that prognosis. He was spending little time courting MPs and much more of it with his latest romantic interest and accumulating cash as fast as he could on the speaking and writing circuit. He seemed poised to stand for the leadership but then use his subsequent exclusion from the membership ballot by his fellow MPs as a form of martyrdom.
What has changed to so assist his ambitions? The single largest answer is the re-emergence of Nigel Farage and the spectacular success of his Brexit Paper in the European Parliament elections. The Farage Factor has totally spooked a large section of the parliamentary Conservative Party. It has created an entirely unexpected context in which the first priority for many MPs – whether of a Remain or Leave hue – is to find a leader who can burst the Brexit Party bubble as quickly as possible and so ensure that that Labour are not handed the keys to 10 Downing Street by default. Political instinct and polling evidence suggests that the ex-Foreign Secretary is by far the most probable political antidote to the Farage fever. It is the logic behind the sudden stampede of votes for Boris.
The second explanation is similar but more sophisticated. It is that it is a political imperative for the Conservative Party to leave the EU on October 31st while avoiding a No Deal outcome. Realistically that means enacting a rebranded but not rewritten version of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement with a repackaged designed to ensure that both the Democratic Unionist Party and the 26 Tory MPs from the European Research Group faction, who have refused to back the Agreement thus far, move in to line. The individual, it is asserted, who is by far best placed to do that by pledging a completely different approach to stage two of the Brexit negotiations, with the explicit objective of reaching a Canada-style free trade agreement with the EU and nothing more complicated or intimate than that is the ex-Mayor of London. This rationale explains why some May loyalists have switched to him.
Finally, pressure from constituency activists on MPs has affected the parliamentary part of this process to an extent that the system was supposed to prevent happening. To an unprecedented degree, MPs have felt obliged to declare their support publicly in advance (some 72% of them did) and a section of them will have sought favour from local parties by embracing the Boris cause.
So does that make him unstoppable? Is it all over bar the shouting? No, this is still a real contest.
The parliamentary numbers will narrow as the process progresses.
The figures in the first ballot look like something of a rout for the Johnson campaign. Their man was 71 votes ahead of the second place candidate Mr Hunt. He accumulated some 34 votes more than the Hunt and Gove totals combined. Indeed, he was ahead of the second, third and fourth place finishers combined. That momentum will continue in to the second round as the supporters (20 in total) of Mrs Leadsom and Ms McVey, both of whom are committed Brexiteers, would naturally pivot towards Mr Johnson rather than anyone serving in the Cabinet at the moment. The ten votes cast for Mr Harper will probably fall in several directions. That too is helpful for Mr Johnson.
His vast lead will narrow once other rounds are held. Of the remaining six rivals to him in the race it is only those aligned to Mr Raab, the ex-Brexit Secretary and arguably a more hard-line opponent of concessions to the EU than anyone remaining in the race, who would automatically be expected to move to Mr Johnson rather than to anyone else. When he is eventually forced to drop out, Mr Raab would be expected to endorse Mr Johnson (in part as a means of ensuring his return to the Cabinet). Yet all of the other options – starting with those who have the lowest tally of votes as of today, Mr Stewart and Mr Hancock - would be far more likely to move to the “Not Boris” contender next. This is also true for Mr Javid if he is the next domino to fall. Mr Johnson will still ultimately come top of the pile on the presumption that Mr Hunt and Mr Gove in the end will divide the Not Boris ballots up between them (and that could be a close competition). Their combined number would be not far away from the final Boris figure. The balance of probability is that whichever of them comes third and does not make the run-off section of the race will endorse the alternative to Mr Johnson.
The strength of feeling of the ABB contingent should not be underestimated
Mr Johnson is, to put it very mildly indeed, a Marmite figure among his parliamentary colleagues. Meths might be a better description of how many of them feel about him. That is particularly so for those who have served alongside him when he was a senior Cabinet minister. As Sir Alan Duncan (who was at the Foreign Office under him) noted acidly earlier this week, not a single minister who worked with Mr Johnson at the FCO has openly championed his claims for the party leadership. At least a third of Conservative MPs are privately if quietly in the Anyone But Boris (ABB) fraternity.
This means that there will be MPs willing to undertake the political version of a suicide bombing to keep him out of Downing Street. Mr Stewart, for one, seems to be limbering up for action and he will not be alone. It is risky because it will alienate many activists and invite the danger of de-selection. Despite this, there will be senior figures willing to take that wager or who have determined that this will be their last Parliament and that they have nothing to lose by stating that they would sign up for a vote of no confidence in any Conservative Prime Minister who sought to impose a No Deal on the House of Commons and the country. Phillip Hammond might prove a particularly vital figure in this. Even if Mr Johnson appears to be the overwhelming favourite, he will not enjoy a benign coronation.
The internal and external scrutiny of the front-runner will be absolutely intense.
Mr Johnson is fortunate that the membership section of the election is a comparatively short one. It is destined to last little more than a month. If it had run all the way to September then rationing his media and other appearances would be very hard to sustain. Even so, a month is long enough for an opponent and a sceptical media to subject him to an onslaught of inquiry and scrutiny that he has never had to face previously. It could be that the Conservative membership is either so enchanted with him or so dedicated to the Brexit cause that it will disregard any mistakes that he makes during the campaign trail or fresh revelations about his past conduct or statements. It is also conceivable that he could be knocked off his perch either by the efforts of others or his own unforced errors. There will be many words to describe this leadership competition. “Pretty” will not be one of them.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA