There are only three Tory leadership candidates that matter – and two of them are Boris Johnson. This is how the numbers shake out: in a first round poll this morning, those who failed to clear a 16-vote threshold were eliminated. (Farewell, then, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey and Mark Harper. You have officially become answers to difficult quiz questions in years to come.) Johnson was the clear winner with 114 votes, with Jeremy Hunt trailing in second place with 43 votes.

Further rounds will whittle the pack to two. That shortlist is then put to Conservative members, who expect to see Johnson’s name on the ballot paper. MPs have signalled that they will oblige. Unless Johnson is disqualified by sudden scandal – always a possibility – he gets a bye to the final. The intervening knockout stages are about identifying the non-Johnson contender.

When Jeremy Hunt launches himself as a “serious leader”, he obviously means “more serious than Boris”. Sajid Javid was more explicit, describing Johnson as “yesterday’s news” and inviting Conservatives to choose “a new kind of leader … not just for Christmas, not just for Brexit”. The private conversations and bidding wars going on around parliament are even more candid. It is all about who stands a chance against Johnson.

There isn’t an obvious answer. Some Conservative MPs have crossed into a place of such profound despair about their party’s predicament that no practical, strategic argument can rival the comforting offer of a magician leader. Not all of Johnson’s backers are convinced that he has the extraordinary voter magnetism sometimes attributed to him, but they believe he has more of that quality than anyone else in the contest. Crucially, they are tired: tired of arguing, of thinking about parliamentary numbers and deals and procedures. They want the bad feelings to go away. Johnson makes Tories feel good about being Tory in a way that few Tories can.

I have been struck in recent days by how open some of Johnson’s supporters are about their surrender to magical thinking about his prospects. I expect pushback when I suggest to MPs that the whole thing is an exercise in wishing away deep structural challenges, but often they don’t deny it. I have heard the prospect of Johnson’s leadership described by someone who endorses it as a “desperate measure”. I have heard it described as the action of a team that is three-nil down with 10 minutes to go and as a “Hail Mary pass”. For want of an actual plan, the Conservative party is preparing to clutch its special, talismanic charm and pray for a miracle. That is not an offer that is available to the other candidates.

‘When Jeremy Hunt launches himself as a “serious leader”, he obviously means “more serious than Boris”.’ Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

It gets even harder for whoever else makes it to the final round because he (and it is now guaranteed to be a man) would be competing against two people called Boris Johnson. One served as mayor of London from 2008-2016. He has liberal, metropolitan instincts – broadly pro-immigration, old-fashioned in his use of idiom, but a moderniser at heart. That Johnson was once celebrated by his party as the “Heineken candidate” because, in homage to the old advertising slogan, he could refresh parts of the electorate that other Tories couldn’t reach. He won in the capital, a Labour heartland. Twice.

Then there is 2016-2019 Johnson, figurehead of the Vote Leave campaign, the ultimate Brexit-booster. He is a more aggressive, divisive figure – a partisan of nationalistic culture wars who has consorted with Steve Bannon, the notorious alt-right ideologue inside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This is the Johnson who compares Muslim women in burqas to “letterboxes” and who defended the jibe yesterday as a bit of unvarnished plain-speaking – the kind of thing the public prefers to “bureaucratic platitudes”. This is post-truth, Trumpesque Johnson who threatens to take the UK out of the EU with no deal and to renege on financial commitments already made to Brussels. He would build an invisible wall and make Ireland pay for it.

Quick Guide Tory tribes Show The ERG hardcore The most resistant segment of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs comprises 28 pro-Brexit backbenchers who have refused to be wooed by Theresa May and opposed her third attempt to pass her Brexit deal. Steve Baker, Andrew Bridgen and Mark Francois are the most vocal members. Jacob Rees-Mogg remains close to the group despite backing May’s deal. Another 100 MPs have been associated with the ERG, including the potential Tory leadership candidates Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom. Blue-collar Conservatives Esther McVey, a Brexiter who reluctantly voted for Theresa May’s deal, is the latest Tory to breathe life into the idea of blue-collar conservatism, previously championed by Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee. McVey launched her version on 20 May at an event widely seen as the unofficial start of her leadership bid. She and fellow MPs including Eddie Hughes, Ben Bradley and Scott Mann plan to tour UK pubs to spread their message. McVey’s supporters claim to have up to 40 MPs signed up to the group; other Brexiters claim the figure is less than 20. One Nation Group Amber Rudd has spearheaded this pro-remain, anti-no-deal group of MPs, which includes the international development secretary, Rory Stewart, and the former cabinet ministers Nicky Morgan and Damian Green. The group claims to have more than 60 MPs onboard and plans to stand against “narrow nationalism” and division and in favour of internationalism, environmental policies and protecting consumers from corporations and an “over-mighty state”.



Scottish Tories Led by the hugely popular Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Tories in Holyrood, and the Scottish secretary, David Mundell, this group’s overtly remain tendencies put them at odds with the likes of the ERG. Among the 13 Scottish Tory MPs and 31 MSPs there is controversy over Boris Johnson, who is a highly divisive figure in Scotland.

Modernists A loose term nowadays, since the former Cameroons are largely nowhere to be seen. Those flying the flag for a more socially progressive, relatable kind of conservatism include the former education secretary Justine Greening and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who even set up his own app in an attempt to keep up with the digital age. Both Greening and Hancock want to move on from Brexit so that other issues can be dealt with, but they are split on what that should look like. Greening has promoted a second referendum, while Hancock is urging all Brexiters to get behind May’s deal.



Both Johnsons are dispensing wild promises to Tory MPs behind closed doors. Moderates and former remainers have been led to understand that London Johnson is the real one; that he does truly understand the perils of no-deal Brexit, that his domestic policy agenda would not be some turbo-Thatcherite slash-and-burn charge to the right. On the contrary, a liberal social reformer would emerge to renew Conservatism for the benefit of people who feel economically left behind.

Meanwhile, Trumpy Johnson is reassuring hardline Brexiteers that nothing is off the table – not even a prorogation of parliament – in the drive to get the UK out of the EU at any cost. He cuts taxes for high-earners and lights the bonfire of regulation that Eurosceptic ultras have always seen as the festive culmination of their drive for liberation from Brussels. This Johnson promises to win back voters from Nigel Farage. He is the one that most Tory members (including an unquantified caucus of newly arrived ex-Ukippers) seem to think they are getting. But the other Johnson is meant to lead a different kind of electoral recovery, shoring up seats that could be lost because pro-European Conservatives flock to the Lib Dems or stay at home on polling day. Self-styled “One Nation” Conservatives and rightwing ultras each seem to think the other side is being taken for a ride, which suggests they all are.

It is possible that this strategy will unravel before the end of the contest. Maybe enough people will be put off by the flagrant duplicity that a non-Johnson candidate can somehow navigate a path to victory. But with two Boris Johnsons running, and both likely to make the final round, the laws of probability alone point to someone of that name being our next prime minister. Who he really is, what, if anything, he believes, and what he might be capable of doing is anybody’s guess.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist