Might Tory MPs refuse to recognisee Boris Johnson as leader if party members choose him? George Osborne raises the prospect on the Andrew Neil Show today saying:
I think there’s a real chance the Tory parliamentary party says ‘we don’t accept the result of the members’ ballot. We don’t accept that 200 of us are going to serve under a PM we didn’t want’. And so I think the crisis will develop sooner than the privileges committee. It will develop at the end of this coming week and the beginning of this coming week, the beginning of next week, if Johnson gets through.
This might reflect the attitude of Osborne’s contacts in Parliament (who found Boris V1 hard enough to deal with) but it’s not, so far, hugely widespread. There are degrees of Boris hatred, and only a small number are at the stage when they’d resign the whip or trigger a by-election if he came back.
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