Conservative leadership election

[LabourJersey]

Do we know when the first ballot will be held on Thursday? Will we know the results as soon as they're counted or would we have to wait?

[beesley]

Do we know when the first ballot will be held on Thursday? Will we know the results as soon as they're counted or would we have to wait?

Results declared at 1pm GMT

[Zinneke]

Are any of the candidates supporting May's deal?

[cp]

Are any of the candidates supporting May's deal?

No, or at least not explicitly. The contenders proposing a new/different deal are, in effect, offering to keep most of May's deal except for some part of it they don't like, usually the backstop. Thing is, because the EU won't renegotiate, any candidate who isn't advocating for 'no-deal' is tacitly arguing for May's deal (or a general election and/or referendum, but they've all denounced that path as suicide for the party)

[Zinneke]

Are any of the candidates supporting May's deal?

No, or at least not explicitly. The contenders proposing a new/different deal are, in effect, offering to keep most of May's deal except for some part of it they don't like, usually the backstop. Thing is, because the EU won't renegotiate, any candidate who isn't advocating for 'no-deal' is tacitly arguing for May's deal (or a general election and/or referendum, but they've all denounced that path as suicide for the party)

Thanks
What about Gove's idea of a long term delay? How feasible is this?

[beesley]

Are any of the candidates supporting May's deal?

No, or at least not explicitly. The contenders proposing a new/different deal are, in effect, offering to keep most of May's deal except for some part of it they don't like, usually the backstop. Thing is, because the EU won't renegotiate, any candidate who isn't advocating for 'no-deal' is tacitly arguing for May's deal (or a general election and/or referendum, but they've all denounced that path as suicide for the party)

Thanks
What about Gove's idea of a long term delay? How feasible is this?

Ultimately depends on the will of the EU27. Macron most obviously wants no delay but has caved in everytime.

There have been suggestions the EU would recognise the change in scene of a new PM. But it's a good tactic to say 'no renegotiation' when they got most of what they want.

[Famous Mortimer]

So which candidates are against No Deal and which are for it?

[beesley]

So which candidates are against No Deal and which are for it?

Explicitly favour of a no deal or 'managed exit.'

Esther McVey
Andrea Leadsom

Hopeful for a deal but prepared for a no deal in order to leave on 31st Oct

Boris Johnson
Dominic Raab
Sajid Javid

Hopeful for a deal and would extend A50 in order to see it happen, but not ruling out no deal

Michael Gove
Jeremy Hunt

Have their own plan to avoid no deal but not opposed to no deal if said plan fails

Mark Harper
Matt Hancock

Explicitly opposed to no deal - if nothing can be achieved they will only leave on Theresa May's deal

Rory Stewart

[beesley]

Here's where things stand the day before nominations.

[CumbrianLefty]

So which candidates are against No Deal and which are for it?

Explicitly favour of a no deal or 'managed exit.'

Esther McVey
Andrea Leadsom

Hopeful for a deal but prepared for a no deal in order to leave on 31st Oct

Boris Johnson
Dominic Raab
Sajid Javid

Hopeful for a deal and would extend A50 in order to see it happen, but not ruling out no deal

Michael Gove
Jeremy Hunt

Have their own plan to avoid no deal but not opposed to no deal if said plan fails

Mark Harper
Matt Hancock

Explicitly opposed to no deal - if nothing can be achieved they will only leave on Theresa May's deal

Rory Stewart

Dominic "ABOLISH PARLIAMENT" Raab is gung-ho for no deal shurely?

[beesley]

So which candidates are against No Deal and which are for it?

Explicitly favour of a no deal or 'managed exit.'

Esther McVey
Andrea Leadsom

Hopeful for a deal but prepared for a no deal in order to leave on 31st Oct

Boris Johnson
Dominic Raab
Sajid Javid

Hopeful for a deal and would extend A50 in order to see it happen, but not ruling out no deal

Michael Gove
Jeremy Hunt

Have their own plan to avoid no deal but not opposed to no deal if said plan fails

Mark Harper
Matt Hancock

Explicitly opposed to no deal - if nothing can be achieved they will only leave on Theresa May's deal

Rory Stewart

Dominic "ABOLISH PARLIAMENT" Raab is gung-ho for no deal shurely?

There's a difference between him  and McVey - he wants to seek a deal but doesn't find no deal a problem at all, whereas McVey won't even bother renegotiating.

[beesley]

 

Final declarations/estimate - add a few MPs to each candidate for an accurate reading. 15 mins we'll see how right we were!

[YL]

First ballot: Johnson way ahead, Harper, McVey and Leadsom out.

Johnson 114
Hunt 43
Gove 37
Raab 27
Javid 23
Hancock 20
Stewart 19
-----
Leadsom 11
Harper 10
McVey 9

It's worth pointing out that 114 is enough that even if all other Tory MPs split evenly between two candidates they couldn't keep him out of the top two.

[YL]

From UK General Discussion:

So, is anyone likely to overtake Hunt to join Johnson on the postal ballot?

I think the consensus is that the others will generally transfer to each other and not to him, so yes, but it seems to me like he should get good transfers from some, like Hancock.

Johnson feels almost certain to win at this point.

Johnson is going to win unless something big happens.

The Anyone But Boris tendency might try to think about who of the other six has the best chance of beating him in the final ballot, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any of them do have much of a chance.

Hancock, Javid, Raab and Stewart all need more votes to stay in after the next ballot (when the threshold is 33).  Just thinking about the eliminated candidates, McVey and Leadsom's voters may well favour Raab, so I think he has the best chance, but some votes usually move around in these things.

[Velasco]

I'll give my two cents to say: go Rory Stewart!

The Tory leadership contest is entertaining as a show, but one can imagine it's something more serious than a vaudeville act. Are Tories going to elect Boris Johnson as leader? Really?

Trump & Johnson, what a pair of comedians!

[RogueBeaver]

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1139258134105591808

[CumbrianLefty]

Esther McVey - LOL. Even fewer votes than Mark "who??" Harper.

And it genuinely couldn't happen to a nicer person.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Loved the German editorials I've read today either asking "have the Brits gone completely insane now?" or diagnosing the Tories with suicidal/masochistic tendencies due to Johnson's success.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

What would it take to get Hunt or Gove across the finish line?

[CumbrianLefty]

What would it take to get Hunt or Gove across the finish line?

Johnson spectacularly self-destructing in some way?

That remains very possible at some point, but in all likelihood not before he becomes PM.

[Oryxslayer]

I'll give my two cents to say: go Rory Stewart!

The Tory leadership contest is entertaining as a show, but one can imagine it's something more serious than a vaudeville act. Are Tories going to elect Boris Johnson as leader? Really?

Trump & Johnson, what a pair of comedians!

If bojo is one of the two that goes to the membership, he will win. On some level then he might have already won because of the high first round selections.

Now is this really a bad thing for the Tories? Well, even though I hate the guy, I tend to be very bullish on his prospects. The man has that polarizing Teflon that is so common these days in nations that have progressed beyond the need to fight for the political center. He's, right now, popular with the leave voters. Despite the fact that this phenomenon is associated with Trump and other right-wingers, it is by no means unique to them or held exclusively by them. If the man can get the Brexit vote into his corner and the opposition remains divided then...

[Velasco]

I'll give my two cents to say: go Rory Stewart!

The Tory leadership contest is entertaining as a show, but one can imagine it's something more serious than a vaudeville act. Are Tories going to elect Boris Johnson as leader? Really?

Trump & Johnson, what a pair of comedians!

If bojo is one of the two that goes to the membership, he will win. On some level then he might have already won because of the high first round selections.

Now is this really a bad thing for the Tories? Well, even though I hate the guy, I tend to be very bullish on his prospects. The man has that polarizing Teflon that is so common these days in nations that have progressed beyond the need to fight for the political center. He's, right now, popular with the leave voters. Despite the fact that this phenomenon is associated with Trump and other right-wingers, it is by no means unique to them or held exclusively by them. If the man can get the Brexit vote into his corner and the opposition remains divided then...

While polarizing figures can be electorally successful (and often that's the case), he may end disappointing hard Brexit supporters because his stance is untenable beyond rhetoric. Anyway he may be realistically the winner of the next general election and that's a terrifying perspective for the UK, as well as terrible news for Ed Miliband.

[YL]

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1139258134105591808

Candidates who are going to formally withdraw must do so by lunchtime today.  It looks like Hancock may well do so.

Robert Peston also says there is some talk of either getting rid of the membership ballot (presumably by persuading the runner up to withdraw, as happened last time) or massively shortening it.
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-06-13/why-tory-members-ballot-on-boris-johnson-may-be-culled-or-truncated-writes-robert-peston/

So the PM Johnson nightmare may start sooner than expected.

[Zinneke]

There was an interesting perspective by Rafael Behr in the Guardian that said that a lot of Remain Tories actually think Boris is fooling the Brexiteers and vice-versa :

It gets even harder for whoever else makes it to the final round because he (and it is now guaranteed to be a man) would be competing against two people called Boris Johnson. One served as mayor of London from 2008-2016. He has liberal, metropolitan instincts – broadly pro-immigration, old-fashioned in his use of idiom, but a moderniser at heart. That Johnson was once celebrated by his party as the “Heineken candidate” because, in homage to the old advertising slogan, he could refresh parts of the electorate that other Tories couldn’t reach. He won in the capital, a Labour heartland. Twice.

Then there is 2016-2019 Johnson, figurehead of the Vote Leave campaign, the ultimate Brexit-booster. He is a more aggressive, divisive figure – a partisan of nationalistic culture wars who has consorted with Steve Bannon, the notorious alt-right ideologue inside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This is the Johnson who compares Muslim women in burqas to “letterboxes” and who defended the jibe yesterday as a bit of unvarnished plain-speaking – the kind of thing the public prefers to “bureaucratic platitudes”. This is post-truth, Trumpesque Johnson who threatens to take the UK out of the EU with no deal and to renege on financial commitments already made to Brussels. He would build an invisible wall and make Ireland pay for it.

Both Johnsons are dispensing wild promises to Tory MPs behind closed doors. Moderates and former remainers have been led to understand that London Johnson is the real one; that he does truly understand the perils of no-deal Brexit, that his domestic policy agenda would not be some turbo-Thatcherite slash-and-burn charge to the right. On the contrary, a liberal social reformer would emerge to renew Conservatism for the benefit of people who feel economically left behind.

Not impossible to think that Boris simply reverts back to London Boris after this campaign. And Brexiteers would only have themselves to blame.

[YL]

There was an interesting perspective by Rafael Behr in the Guardian that said that a lot of Remain Tories actually think Boris is fooling the Brexiteers and vice-versa :

It gets even harder for whoever else makes it to the final round because he (and it is now guaranteed to be a man) would be competing against two people called Boris Johnson. One served as mayor of London from 2008-2016. He has liberal, metropolitan instincts – broadly pro-immigration, old-fashioned in his use of idiom, but a moderniser at heart. That Johnson was once celebrated by his party as the “Heineken candidate” because, in homage to the old advertising slogan, he could refresh parts of the electorate that other Tories couldn’t reach. He won in the capital, a Labour heartland. Twice.

Then there is 2016-2019 Johnson, figurehead of the Vote Leave campaign, the ultimate Brexit-booster. He is a more aggressive, divisive figure – a partisan of nationalistic culture wars who has consorted with Steve Bannon, the notorious alt-right ideologue inside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This is the Johnson who compares Muslim women in burqas to “letterboxes” and who defended the jibe yesterday as a bit of unvarnished plain-speaking – the kind of thing the public prefers to “bureaucratic platitudes”. This is post-truth, Trumpesque Johnson who threatens to take the UK out of the EU with no deal and to renege on financial commitments already made to Brussels. He would build an invisible wall and make Ireland pay for it.

Both Johnsons are dispensing wild promises to Tory MPs behind closed doors. Moderates and former remainers have been led to understand that London Johnson is the real one; that he does truly understand the perils of no-deal Brexit, that his domestic policy agenda would not be some turbo-Thatcherite slash-and-burn charge to the right. On the contrary, a liberal social reformer would emerge to renew Conservatism for the benefit of people who feel economically left behind.

Not impossible to think that Boris simply reverts back to London Boris after this campaign. And Brexiteers would only have themselves to blame.

It is certainly widely believed that he has no real personal belief in Brexit and only signed up for it at the last minute because he thought it was best for his political career.

But could he really carry off going back to being a moderate?  A lot of people really dislike and distrust him now (and I would suggest that there are abundant reasons to distrust him, pretty much whatever your politics).