Boris Johnson’s team denies ‘stitch up’ of Michael Gove
Boris Johnson is facing Jeremy Hunt in the final stage in race to become Prime Minister after a brutal day in Westminster.
Michael Gove lost out on reaching the final two in the contest by just two votes – winning the support of 75 MPs compared to Hunt’s 77.
Johnson topped the poll with 160 backers, and will now go forward with the foreign secretary to a ballot of Conservative party members.
While Gove took to Twitter to offer “many congratulations” to Hunt and Johnson, some of his supporters felt their candidate had been victim of a stitch up to keep him off the final ballot.
In the last round of voting, Johnson’s support went up by just three votes, while Hunt’s surged by 18 and Gove’s increased by 14.
The suggestion was that some of Johnson’s backers voted for Hunt – secure in the knowledge their preferred candidate had an unassailable lead – as they wanting to keep fellow Brexiter Gove off the final ballot.
There was also a suggestion that revenge could be a motivation, as Gove sunk Johnson’s tilt at the leadership in 2016 – withdrawing his support on the day of Johnson’s launch.
When one Gove supporter was asked by City PM if he feared there had been a stitch up, he replied: “Of course.”
Another campaign source told The Sun: “If you’ve got a big lead, you can do what you want with that. No, it’s not cricket, but it is politics”.
A source on the Johnson campaign hit back, and describing the speculation as “all nonsense”.
The day began with four candidates in the race, but after a ballot of MPs before lunch home secretary Sajid Javid was eliminated – finishing last with 34 votes.
With just four and a half hours between that announcement and the closing of the next voting period, Gove’s and Hunt’s teams worked hard to convince Javid supporters to back their respective candidates.
Mel Stride, one of the key figures in Gove’s campaign, even resorted to messaging Johnson supporters asking them to support his man in order to ensure the final two in the race with Brexiters – compared to Hunt who voted Remain in the 2016 referendum.
After the vote was announced, Stride was cool on suggestions Gove had been blocked from getting on the ballot by Johnson, saying: “If you look at the numbers it appears to me that didn’t happen, or if it did happen they were rather brilliant in getting it down to just a margin of two.”
Johnson and Hunt will now take part in 16 hustings events around the country, kicking off in Birmingham on Saturday.
The result of the ballot of Conservative party members will be announced in the week commencing 22nd July.