After the first round of voting, Boris Johnson is the clear frontrunner, but the rest of the picture looks less clear. Here’s what the candidates need to do – and avoid doing – to get down to the final two and on to the members’ ballot.
Boris Johnson
The former foreign secretary already has enough support to progress through to the members’ ballot. All Johnson needs to do is sit tight, keep his MPs sweet and try not to ruin it for himself.
The biggest risk for Johnson is himself. He has kept a low profile in the media and stayed in the tearooms and in his office, methodically talking round colleagues. His team know that one negative news cycle because of an off-guard comment could see his star plummet – and Johnson is more prone to those than most.
His biggest risk is the upcoming TV debates, which his team has not confirmed he will take part in. If he dodges them, he will be accused of avoiding scrutiny, which went badly for Theresa May in the general election. If he takes part, all the other candidates are likely to turn their attacks on him.
Jeremy Hunt
His team insisted he was pleased with second place, but he must have been hoping for a better showing than 43 votes, just over a third of Johnson’s tally. The foreign secretary has the most impressive endorsements, both cabinet Europhile Amber Rudd and its two biggest Brexit beasts, Penny Mordaunt and Liam Fox.
Hunt’s problem is he is seen as the continuity candidate, the safe pair of hands, when colleagues are starting to see the attraction of a new style.
He will need to try and shake the “Theresa in Trousers” moniker and try to explain better to Tory MPs why he, and not Johnson, has a better chance of beating Jeremy Corbyn.
Michael Gove
Gove has had perhaps the worst leadership contest so far – his admission that he had taken cocaine dominated the news cycle for almost five days and his backers feared that Gove, once expected to be a shoo-in for the final two, would haemorrhage votes.
Coming in third behind Hunt is perhaps a better show than Gove might have expected in the circumstances. There could still be a recovery for the environment secretary. He has better Brexiter credentials than Hunt, is liked by the moderate wing of the party, and is a better orator than almost any other candidate.
That will mean he could regain some backers if he gives a good performance in the TV debates – though colleagues may think that his momentum has permanently stalled.
Dominic Raab
Raab modelled himself as the true Brexiter candidate for the new generation, but lost out on a slew of endorsements from the European Research Group of hard Brexiter Tories, who have rallied behind Johnson. He also had some rocky moments during his launch week, with awkward questions about his comments on feminists.
It is difficult to see how his campaign could recover, though he could pick up a number of new endorsements from candidates who have been eliminated, including Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom – but there are not many between them.
His limited chance of success really now depends on whether Johnson stumbles and a more moderate candidate gains momentum, in which case Raab could be the beneficiary. His friends say he is unlikely to drop out until he has to – one called him “the Japanese soldier on the island still fighting world war two”.
Sajid Javid
Javid struggled to define himself in the first days of the campaign, not a fresh face, not a safe pair of hands, or a true Brexit believer – none of which was helped by a shonky launch video.
Yet his campaign has improved markedly in recent days, with the endorsement of popular Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, a polished leadership video telling the moving story of his background, and a lively launch speech, even though it was delayed by two hours by a parliamentary vote.
The boost Javid has had in recent days is probably what has kept him in the race, though his spinners have been forced into describing him as coming “a strong fifth”.
He is expected to make a new push over the weekend to define himself as the change candidate who can talk to Tory voters in new places – though he may also be tempted to drop out to tuck in behind one of the frontrunners. However, it is hard to see how he could make it into the final two from this position.
Matt Hancock
The health secretary has run an energetic campaign arguing that the Tories must also pay attention to the threat from the Lib Dems as well as the Brexit party. His leadership launch was a touch shambolic, however – he stood in front of a window which made him look like a walking silhouette on the TV.
Though his team have suggested he got more votes than he expected, he cannot have been pleased to have come just one vote above Rory Stewart, the outsider who many expected would be eliminated in this round.
Hancock would have hoped he could pick up Stewart’s supporters, but may now feel his bid has come to the end of the road.
Rory Stewart
Stewart said he was “over the moon” to scrape into the next round of voting with 19 votes, one-sixth of Johnson’s tally, and insisted afterwards he could still make the final two.
Stewart still has a mountain to climb to get into the next round, where he will need to get another 14 endorsements – and avoid coming last – or he will be automatically eliminated.
The safe money would say it is likely that he will not make it through the next round, yet it is just about possible that his mounting popularity with the public could convince colleagues to take a gamble on him if they hope to find an outsider with a chance of beating Johnson.
