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Fight for Second Place Dominates U.K. Tory Leadership Race

Fight for Second Place Dominates U.K. Tory Leadership Race

(Bloomberg) -- With Boris Johnson so far ahead in the race to be the next U.K. prime minister, the fight is now focused on winning second place.

The top two candidates chosen in the vote of Conservative members of Parliament will fight for the leadership in a ballot of 160,000 Tory activists next month.

Johnson won 126 votes in Tuesday’s ballot of MPs. But just 13 votes separate Jeremy Hunt, who came second with 46 votes, from Sajid Javid, who came fifth. All the candidates believe they have a shot at making it to the final two, as the voting among MPs continues, and none is likely to drop out.

It will be hard for any of the remaining contenders to beat Johnson in the head-to-head ballot of party members, but they might be able to unsettle him in different ways.

Hunt would portray himself as a safer alternative to Johnson’s maverick. Michael Gove could outshine him in any face-to-face TV debates. And Javid would probably push Johnson to take a harder Brexit position. The underdog, Rory Stewart, might challenge him on what he would do if his initial Brexit strategy failed.

With dozens of votes to spare, Johnson could in theory instruct trusted allies to vote for the candidate he’d rather face, easing his path to eventual victory next month.

In play on Wednesday morning were the 30 MPs who voted for Brexit hardliner Dominic Raab in the second round, after he was eliminated. Although most of them are likely to follow Raab’s example and switch to backing Johnson, Javid would only need to pick up five votes to have a shot at overtaking Stewart, who came fourth on Tuesday.

Stewart, who is advocating sticking with the existing Brexit deal, is unlikely to have much chance with Raab’s backers, though he claimed he’s picked up some of them. But he might be able to garner votes from other candidates.

For the third-placed Gove, who is just five votes behind Hunt’s tally, the hope is that either Stewart or Javid is knocked out and he is able to inherit enough of their supporters to move into second place.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny

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