UK Leadership Contenders Make Final Push to Oppose Favourite Johnson to Replace Theresa May

Barring a last-minute upset, former Mayor of London Boris Johnson is all but certain to make it to the final ballot to replace Theresa May, but the position of challenger remains up for grabs and would-be leader Michael Gove has made a final push to revitalise his flagging campaign.

The leadership race, which officially begun earlier this month after Prime Minister Theresa May stood down from party leadership over her failure to deliver Brexit, will decide not just who leads the Conservative Party next, but also who will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. While the Conservatives do not hold an outright majority in Parliament, they are the largest party and govern in agreement with the pro-Brexit Ulster DUP group.

Delingpole: Channel 4’s Rigged Leadership Debate Had Two Winners – Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage https://t.co/nhuDv8jMTC

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 17, 2019

Boris Johnson has been the favourite since before the competition began, but was also the favourite in 2016 at the time of the last leadership challenge when he was forced to withdraw after his running-mate Michael Gove withdrew support and started his own campaign. Boris stumbling then left the road open for Theresa May to become Prime Minister — a mistake Johnson and his supporters are eager to avoid.

Now Gove is standing against Johnson again, apparently taking over the British establishment newspaper of choice The Times on the final morning of the competition before candidates are once again thinned down for the last two-contender ballot next week. Enjoying a significant front-page story Tuesday, Gove also had an opinion piece published under his own name in the newspaper at which he was once an assistant editor.

In this, Gove took the attack not to Johnson but to Rory Stewart, the unlikely race outsider who is now the bookmaker’s favourite to take the number two spot.

Report: Tories Threaten to Defect to Farage’s Party if Johnson Fails to Deliver Brexit https://t.co/PcqTdRKG9u

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 17, 2019

While it is doubtful that Stewart is what the Conservative Party needs after three punishing years where voters have abandoned it in droves predominantly over its failure to deliver Brexit — Stewart backed remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum and now campaigns against Britain cutting ties with the European Union — he has fought a media-savvy oddball campaign.

In his Tuesday column, Gove highlighted the danger of a weak leader — and Stewart has made a point in his campaign of highlighting his own fallibility in an apparent exercise of humble self-effacement — in being unable to oppose Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. Gove wrote:

Jeremy Corbyn, who is only one bad general election result away from No 10 Downing Street, is no ordinary Labour leader. Under his watch, Labour has gone from being a party with a proud history and tradition of public service to one that is a magnet for antisemites and the militant hard-left.

We are no longer talking about the party of Attlee and Bevan, which established the NHS and pioneered the modern welfare state. Instead we face one that would carry out Marxist economic experiments at home and — as we have just seen — side with terrorist sponsors like Iran over the United States abroad.

Gove Calls Brexit Date ‘Arbitrary’, Would Delay for ‘Better Deal’ if PM https://t.co/PNYIF2jItm

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 6, 2019

Pointing to himself as a worthy challenger above Stewart, Gove stated the final two should both be clear Brexiteers, so not to exacerbate tensions within the party. By making the choice about who would better deliver Brexit, rather than a continued debate about whether to leave the European Union at all, the party would be in a stronger position going forward, Gove Said.

These remarks came despite Gove having said he would consider delaying Brexit once again to negotiate a better deal with the European Union, something the present government has persistently failed to achieve.

As things stand, there are presently six candidates still in the race to become the next leader. That number will thin to four by Tuesday evening, and two on Thursday, presuming there aren’t further drop-outs. Once the race reached two, their names would then go to ordinary members of the Conservative party for a vote.

If any one candidate achieved fifty per cent of the support from Conservative Parliamentarians before then, however, the competition would end without a supporter’s vote, and the new leader would be installed immediately.

Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook