Johnson builds lead in UK prime minister race
Boris Johnson LONDON — increased his lead Tuesday in the race to become Britain’s next prime minister as one of his rivals was eliminated in a party vote, while upstart candidate Rory Stewart defied expectations to stay in the contest.
Johnson, a flamboyant former foreign secretary, won 126 of the 313 votes cast Tues- day in a second-round bal- lot of Conservative Party lawmakers that left five contenders standing. The total all but guarantees that John- son will be one of the candidates in a runoff that will be decided by party members.
Dominic Raab, who tried to vie with Johnson for the votes of committed Brexit supporters, got only 30 votes Tuesday, three short of the threshold needed to go through to the next round.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Home Secre- tary Sajid Javid and Stewart all remain contenders in what is now effectively a race for sec- ond place and a runoff spot.
All five candidates were taking part in a live televi- sion debate on Tuesday evening, two days after John- son skipped another tele- vised debate despite being the front-runner.
Tory lawmakers will vote again Wednesday and Thursday, eliminating at least one candidate each time. The final two contenders will go to a postal ballot of all 160,000 Conservative Party members nationwide.
The winner, due to be announced in late July, will replace Theresa May as both party leader and British prime minister. May stepped down as party leader earlier this month after failing to secure Parliament’s approval for her Brexit deal.
Johnson was already the front-runner after last week’s first round of voting in a race that started out with 10 competitors. He has since been backed by several lawmak- ers who have dropped out. He is admired by many Conservatives for his ability to connect with voters, but others mistrust him for his long record of misleading and false statements, verbal blunders and erratic perfor- mance in high office.
Johnson added a dozen votes to his tally from last week, securing more than the combined total for the next three challengers: Hunt with 46 votes, Gove with 41 and Stewart with 37. Javid scraped into the next round with 33 votes.
Stewart has the most momentum, almost doubling his first-round tally, while Hunt and Gove barely increased their totals.
Stewart, Britain’s minister for international development, calls himself the “anti-Boris,” the pragmatist rival to populist Johnson. He has energized the contest with a combination of plain-speaking and quirkiness. He calls for compromises on Brexit, and accuses his rivals of ped- dling Brexit “fairy tales” about the amazing deals they will secure from the EU.
A former diplomat who once walked across Afghani- stan and was a deputy provin- cial governor in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Stew- art is also the only contender regularly asked whether he has been a British spy. He denies it — but notes that former spies are barred by law from disclosing their covert pasts.