Boris Johnson vs Jeremy Hunt: who will be Britain's next PM?
FT political commentator Sebastian Payne looks at how the party faithful are choosing between their hearts and their heads as they mark their ballots in the Conservative leadership contest
Transcript
You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player
The Conservative party leadership contest is all but over. The ballot papers have gone out to the 160,000 members of Britain's governing party to decide whether Jeremy Hunt or Boris Johnson should be their next leader. The race still has two weeks left to run, but most minds appear to have been made up. So who is going to be the next prime minister and how have the candidates fared in the race?
Jeremy Hunt entered the contest as the underdog. The foreign secretary, man of England's home counties, and the son of an admiral has bigged up his experience as an entrepreneurial deal sealing expert, who can be trusted to steer the SS Great Britain through these choppy times. Mr Hunt has been the candidate of the Tory establishment, in some ways continuing the attitudes of the incumbent PM Theresa May, albeit with a tougher line on Brexit.
But his policy platform has been pretty erratic. His stances on fox-hunting and abortion have surprised some moderate Tories. Some hunt supporters have seen it as a desperate attempt to connect with the party's socially conservative membership. Mr Hunt's pitch has been generally well-received. During the scores of regional hustings he's been greeted with polite, but warm applause. None of the members dislike Mr Hunt, but they don't love him either.
He just doesn't excite a party that is in desperate need of cheering up. As one prominent activist said to me: "Members are trying to choose between their heart and their head." And it seems that their heart is winning.
If Mr Hunt is the calm, predictable candidate, then Boris Johnson is the wild front-runner. As one MP puts it: "Hunt is the nice safe son-in-law. But Boris is the one your daughter falls in love with and runs away to have an exciting if unpredictable life." It is that wild life that Tory MPs seem to want.
Poll after poll shows that the former foreign secretary and mayor of London has a commanding majority and is almost certain to win with over half the party's MPs backing him to be their next leader.
Why? Boris, as is universally known, makes Conservatives feel good about being Conservative. His upbeat message on delivering Brexit, come what may, do or die, by October the 31st, puts huge amounts of public spending amount to a Trumpian 'Make Britain Great' again platform. Throughout the hustings Tory party members have lapped up Boris. They enjoy his bonhomie and enthusiasm.
He could not be more different to Theresa May. But Boris has shied away from policy detail. His plan for Brexit doesn't quite add up. Nobody really knows if he will actually go for no-deal, not even those hardline Brexiters who have supported his candidacy on the basis that he would. This stores up trouble for prime minister Boris.
He has a very wide coalition of support in the party, perhaps too wide, and he's going to have to disappoint some people. And the one thing we know about Mr Johnson is that above all else, he yearns to be liked. But the Tory party doesn't seem to care.
My sense is the they've decided this is Boris's moment, and nothing is going to convince them otherwise. Britain and the party will find out later this summer if this risky bet will pay off.