Marking your own homework. Why Boris Johnson might have wanted Jeremy Hunt to be his rival

The fifth and final ballot of Conservative MPs concluded last night has been greeted with a degree of suspicion by many observers. After round four Michael Gove had edged ahead of Jeremy Hunt for the first time in the contest. As supporters of the then defeated Sajid Javid looked, and not without some logic, somewhat more inclined to back the Environment Secretary over the Foreign Secretary, the working assumption was that Mr Gove would extend his narrow advantage in the final vote. Yet as matters transpired, Mr Hunt’s fortunes were revived and he prevailed by 77 votes to 75 votes over Mr Gove. The Johnsonites swear blind that there was no tactical voting involved at their end.
If you believe that, then I have 100,000 shares in Fairyland available at an exceptional bargain price. There are a set of stellar reasons why the Boris contingent did not want to face Mr Gove in the final ballot and can now feel confident that bar a self-inflicted wound of a stunning degree they can coast home to victory. The reasons why Mr Gove would have been stronger than Mr Hunt are as follows.
Brexit
There is a certain paradox in the fact that The Brexit Party is allowed to be called The Brexit Party. All the survey evidence of the 150,000-160,000 members of the Conservative Party is that at least 75% of them were The Brexit Party in the first place. Mr Johnson did not want Mr Gove up against him because it would have been a battle between the two figures unambiguously identified with the Leave campaign in 2016. They may have fallen out spectacularly afterwards but nothing can rewrite the history that Mr Gove broke from his close friends David Cameron and George Osborne first and after a considerable episode of public anguish Mr Johnson jumped on the Brexit bandwagon later. His reticence has always afforded the suspicion that it was a matter of calculation, not conviction.
But that will not matter against Mr Hunt. He campaigned for Remain. This is hyper liability in the context of an election of the Conservative Party membership. It is only slightly more awkward than being a Protestant running for the office of Pope. He will have to spend most of his time seeking to explain away his transition from Remain to Leave and attempt to convince an innately very sceptical electorate that when he says he would prefer no deal to no Brexit he means it. The practical reality that it is extraordinarily unlikely, allowing for the parliamentary timetable, that a repackaged Brexit withdrawal deal could be enacted by 31 October is a (sizeable) detail that would have been a factor in a Boris v Gove fight but which will be marginal in a Boris v Hunt contest. All Boris needs to do is ask the rhetorical question “who do you think truly believes in Brexit, me (who was there at the head of the Leave crusade in 2016) or him (slimy careerist who backed David Cameron and his ilk then)?” The ex-Foreign Secretary starts with a massive advantage over his successor on the central question.
The Hustings
The Boris campaign has run a pretty disciplined effort in terms of public exposure. Rule One for the front-runner in any election anywhere in the democratic world (and possibly the undemocratic one as well) is do not make any mistakes. As a result, the Boris camp has largely confined its media exposure to his own columns in The Daily Telegraph (which have been so dull in the past three weeks as to invite the notion that someone else has written them), a short interview for the sake of form with The Sunday Times and an appearance at the BBC’s candidates’ debate when there were still five contenders in the competition and hence it was hard for anyone to lay a glove of him.
The path to the members’ ballot appeared to be far more challenging. The Conservative Party Chairman, Brandon Lewis (not thought to be a Boris fan) moved at warp to impose a system where the two finalists would have to endure a sapping sixteen sets of hustings across the country. There will also be a televised debate that (which as the BBC so cocked up their effort on Tuesday inviting a radical Islamist and then a Labour Party member to be “the ordinary members of the public asking questions”) we can anticipate will be on ITV or Sky and thus not really top rank viewing material.
The hustings were, nevertheless, a potential point of danger for the ex-Mayor of London. Mr Gove might not be everyones’ cup of tea but as he has consistently illustrated in the House of Commons he is quick on his feet and prompt in his ability to respond to opponents. If Mr Johnson were to make a “gaffe” on a wet night in Norwich during hustings number eleven, Mr Gove would seize on it with a degree of gusto and make it a defining issue. This might not prove a decisive turn of events but it would be a source of considerable discomfort. That disturbance, Boris would prefer to avoid.
The threat of it is diluted by having Mr Hunt as the alternative. The Foreign Secretary is a very able man, by all accounts an effective minister, and is the sort of human being that one would be very happy to install as a godfather/guardian to your children if the worst happened (who on Planet Earth even among his strongest backers would say the same for BJ?). Yet he is also in essence a manager. He is a process dude. He could run a FTSE 100 company with considerable competence but not with compelling charisma. He will doubtless make lots of sensible points at these various hustings but in a market where multiple “sensible points” are worth less than a single half-decent one-liner. It will be like a contest between an “I speak your weight” machine and Eric Morecambe. Only one winner.
The Media
Despite all of the above, the really decisive difference between Johnson versus Gove and Johnson versus Hunt lies in the media. The first element of all this is narrative and expectations. A battle between Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, allowing for their history in 2016 and the bitter split then, would have been considered “good copy” worth plastering over the front pages. Sustaining a BoJo v Jerry battle over several weeks at the top of the news will be (bar Boris blowing himself up) extremely hard work. By early July, this race could be travelling back to pages nine to eleven in the “serious” newspapers and being wedged next to the “Dear Deidre” part in The Sun. The media hates political coronations and would rather focus on something else instead. Unless Mr Hunt can do something (or his opponent do something to himself) very early in the campaign then the media will quickly deem the whole thing to be an enormous bore and shift its focus elsewhere. That is fine and dandy if one is in charge of the front-runner in an election and total misery if one is the wannabe alternative.
The second aspect relating to the media as to why Johnson v Hunt is different to Johnson to Gove can be summarised in two words “Rupert Murdoch”. The proprietor of News International is a huge fan of Mr Gove. When he fell from grace after July 2016 and was purged from the cabinet by Theresa May, Mr Murdoch took him back on The Times payroll. Mr Gove’s wife is a columnist with The Daily Mail. If he had been in the remaining two contestants, there was at least the chance not merely of editorial backing for him over Mr Johnson (which, to be honest, painful as it is to admit for a person who was chief leader writer of The Times, not a game-changer) but, more consequentially, the swat teams of investigatory reporters of The Sun and The Daily Mail being unleashed on every aspect of Mr Johnson’s life and his personal finances (an under-explored area). Trust me, this is not an event which you would ever wish to encounter. Yet the chances are that it will not now happen. Those in the upper stratosphere of Murdochland (and I know them well of old) will fear that roughing up a front-runner who is still odds-on to win would only assist Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party and will desist. Some people are born lucky. Bar self-implosion, it would seem that Boris is one of them
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA