Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
Boris Johnson Leads UK Leadership Race as Candidates Narrowed to Three
Posted
June 20, 2019
Views
4,143
Likes
26
Comments
12
Engagement
June 20, 2019
4,143
26
12
0.92%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
1:10Now PlayingBritain’s governing Conservative Party narrowed the race to become the country’s next prime minister to three candidates on Thursday, and is set to pick the final two contenders before the end of the day.
Boris Johnson, a former foreign minister and ex-mayor of London, built on his already commanding lead, taking 157 of the votes cast by 313 Conservative lawmakers in their fourth round of voting — a simple majority of the total.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt came next, with 61 and 59 votes respectively. Home Secretary Sajid Javid came fourth with 34 votes and drops out.
Another vote later will select the final two contenders, who will go to a by-mail ballot of all 160,000 Conservative Party members nationwide.
The winner of the contest, due to be announced the week of July 22, will become Conservative leader and prime minister, replacing Theresa May.
The result is a boost for Gove, who had trailed Hunt in third place through three previous rounds.
“I think Michael has the momentum,” said lawmaker Guy Opperman, a Gove supporter. He said Gove “is the right one to be challenging Boris Johnson.”
Many in the party doubt that anyone can beat Johnson, a quick-witted, Latin-spouting extrovert admired for his ability to connect with voters, but mistrusted for his erratic performance, and record of inaccurate and sometimes offensive comments.
Hunt, who has held several senior government posts, is considered an experienced and competent minister, but unexciting.
Gove is a sharp performer and could come out best in head-to-head debates with Johnson, his longstanding frenemy. The two men led the “leave” campaign Britain’s 2016 EU membership referendum, but later fell out when Gove scuttled Johnson’s bid to become prime minister by deciding to run for the job himself.
The move left him with a lingering taint of treachery in the eyes of some Conservatives.
All the candidates are vowing to lead Britain out of the European Union, a challenge that defeated May. She quit as Conservative leader earlier this month after failing to win Parliament’s backing for her Brexit deal.
Brexit, originally scheduled to take place on March 29, has been postponed twice amid political deadlock in London. The candidates differ on how they plan to end the impasse.
Johnson has won backing from the party’s die-hard Brexiteers by insisting the U.K. must leave the bloc on the rescheduled date of Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal to smooth the way.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
TICTOC ON SOCIAL:
Follow TicToc on Twitter
Like TicToc on Facebook
Follow TicToc on Instagram
Watch all of TicToc’s videos
Listen to TicToc’s podcast
Subscribe to our newsletter
TicToc by Bloomberg is global news for the life you lead. We are a 24/7 news network that covers breaking news, politics, technology, business and entertainment stories from around the globe, supported by a network of Bloomberg’s 2,700 journalists across 120 countries.
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
