Portrait of the Week – 20 June 2019

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Boris Johnson was well ahead in the parliamentary stage of the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, gaining 126 of the 313 votes by MPs in the second ballot, with Jeremy Hunt second at 46 (and Dominic Raab knocked out). He had declined to take part in a Channel 4 debate, and was represented by an empty podium before an audience purporting to be floating voters. The most memorable metaphor of that debate concerned bin bags. Rory Stewart said: ‘I was trying to cram a whole series of rubbish bins into the rubbish bin.’ He had meant to say ‘a whole series of rubbish bags’, but the point was that unrealistic Brexit promises resembled his dustbin experience. Johnson did appear later on a BBC debate, with Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Rory Stewart and Sajid Javid, and all seemed to assent to an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative party.