Boris johnson

In what must be the shortest-lived leadership campaign in the history of the Conservative Party, Andrea Leadsom has just announced that she’s dropping out. She said in her resignation statement that there was not “sufficient support” from her colleagues – perhaps a nod to how many of them said that they would quit the party if she won. She said she wants “the immediate appointment of a strong and well-supported Prime Minister”. And that woman, she said, must be Theresa May. In the four days since the formal leadership race began, it became painfully obvious that Ms Leadsom was simply unfit for the job. She messed up an interview with The Times, saying she didn’t want to attack

Andrea Leadsom has withdrawn from the Tory leadership race, saying ‘the best interests of our country are best served by the immediate appointment of a strong and well-supported Prime Minister’ and that she did not have sufficient support to lead a strong and stable government. She said Theresa May was ‘ideally placed’ to implement Brexit and that she would withdraw immediately so that the new Prime Minister could be appointed immediately. Leadsom did not mention the torrid weekend that she has had, in which she sustained heavy criticism for her comments about having children giving her a ‘direct stake’. But even her supporters had come away from the past few

As a radical paper, The Spectator has always been an admirer of Michael Gove, particularly his education reforms. He was, perhaps, a little too radical when abandoning Boris Johnson at the eleventh hour last week – but let it not be said that he lacks the steel needed to become Prime Minister. Andrea Leadsom was impressive during the referendum campaign and might be a triumph as Prime Minister. But there is only one battle-tested Brexiteer in this contest – and he is Michael Gove. Tory MPs will today choose which two candidates they will ask the membership to choose between. The glitch in the voting system means they get to choose

On the way to interview Michael Gove, we meet a government minister, an Old Etonian, who suggests we ask him, ‘How can anyone trust you ever again?’ Just a fortnight ago, proposing such a question would have been unthinkable: the Justice Secretary had a reputation for being one of the most consistent, decent and honourable men in the cabinet. When Gove agreed to back Boris Johnson’s leadership bid, the pair seemed a dream team. But on the morning of their campaign launch, Gove announced that Johnson was unfit for the job, so he’d stand himself instead. Then, he was knocked out by Conservative MPs who were still recovering from the drama.

As Boris Johnson will know from his love of Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis. And it is Boris’s own hubris — in playing cricket with Lord Spencer the weekend after Brexit, and not finishing his leadership speech on time — that supposedly led to his downfall. I well know from working with Boris at the Telegraph that prompt timekeeping is not his forte. For five years, my Wednesday nights were destroyed as Boris regularly missed the 7 p.m. deadline for delivering his column. ‘It hasn’t arrived,’ I’d say to him over the phone at 7.01 p.m. ‘Ah, Christ, sorry,’ said Boris, ‘Bloody internet! It must be pinging its way down those

At times this week it has seemed as though Sarah Vine will soon be running the country — that is, if she isn’t secretly already. As well as informing readers, through her Daily Mail column, that she — along with her husband Michael Gove — has been ‘charged with implementing the instructions of 17 million people’ following the Leave vote, Vine is reported to have played a pivotal role in the Justice Secretary’s decision to turn his back on Boris Johnson and run for leader. In fact, the first sign that all was not well between the Johnson and Gove camps came when Vine seemingly accidentally sent an email on the topic

The Tory party is waking up this morning reeling from one of its most dramatic days since, well, last week, when the Prime Minister announced he was resigning. MPs from across the party are amazed at what they largely see as not just an act of treachery from Michael Gove but also a breach of how politicians generally behave towards their friends and their party, which is generally with loyalty. Many of them wonder how on earth the Justice Secretary can really reunite the Conservative party at the end of a bitter referendum battle when he has just injected a great deal of bitterness into the leadership contest. Meanwhile, those

This is not something that we are keen to discuss, for we are pretty sure that we have become far less puritanical, and that this is a good thing. But try this experiment. Imagine a slightly different version of Boris: funny, human, brilliant, a bit chaotic-seeming, and so on – but without any hint of sexual scandal. There would still have been question marks over such a Boris becoming PM – especially after his opportunistic Brexit decision. But they would have faded as the prospect of a charismatic, nation-enthusing leader emerged. Some would have called this Boris fundamentally untrustworthy, citing episodes of bullying and aggressive ambition, but such qualms would have