Tory leadership vote result: Boris Johnson surges ahead in first round with 114 votes
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/13/tory-leadership-race-news-vote-conservative-election-brexit/
Rivals are hoping the favourite will implode
Call it the Devon Loch strategy. With Boris Johnson enjoying a seemingly unassailable lead, having won 114 votes in the first round of ballots in the leadership contest to decide our next Prime Minister, his remaining rivals have only one hope: that he will fall, in spectacular fashion, at the final hurdle.
Devon Loch was the racehorse, owned by the Queen Mother, who took a commanding lead in the 1957 Grand National, only to inexplicably tumble to the ground 40 yards from the winning post.
His Blonde Ambition tour now formally underway following – off the back of a low-key launch designed to show he can do sensible, the former foreign secretary also appears to have a clear run.
Not only does he have twice as many declared backers among MPs as any contestant, he is wildly popular among the membership and a new poll shows that were he to be Prime Minister, the Conservatives would be on course for a thumping 140-seat majority.
So the latest strategy among his rivals is to seek to become the candidate still there in the final round, when the two contestants chosen by Conservative MPs are put forward to the membership, and then cross fingers, legs and toes that Mr Johnson will mess up.
For a while, despite an interesting challenge from outsider Rory Stewart, it seemed Michael Gove was a shoo-in for the “not-Boris” role.
The cocaine admission saw off those ambitions, not because Conservatives, particularly Tory MPs, are particularly censorious, but because it has proved a distraction.
Now, on the brink of the first round of ballots, it appears Jeremy Hunt has become the anti-Boris candidate; he is second in declared nominations and has an air of momentum.
Conservative leadership contests are notoriously unpredictable, however, and much could change after the first ballot, particularly if the likes of Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom or Sajid Javid perform better than expected.
Once the final two are in place, how likely is it that Mr Johnson might fail? After all, it’s happened before – largely thanks to Mr Gove in 2015 – and look how that ended.
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