Here is the Times’s leading article on the contest for the Tory party leadership: it “should be between Theresa May and Michael Gove. They are the strongest campaigners, the most experienced ministers and the best representatives of mainstream views within the party.”

And here is the Sun’s leading article: “The final choice for our next prime minister must be between Theresa May and Michael Gove. No one else will do.”

No one else? What about Andrea Leadsom? Here’s the Times’s view on her:

“Mrs Leadsom is a talented politician but it would be unprecedented to promote a junior energy minister to No 10 after just six years in parliament.”

And here is the Sun’s:

“We salute Andrea Leadsom’s spirited campaigning to leave the EU... But the energy minister is entirely untested at the highest level.”

Am I being overly conspiracist in detecting Rupert Murdoch pulling strings at his two newspapers? Or is it mere coincidence that Times editor John Witherow and Sun editor Tony Gallagher reached the same opinion, and used the same phrases, to fight the good fight on behalf of Gove?



With the Daily Mail’s Brexit-loving editor Paul Dacre maintaining his support for remain-campaigning May, the battle I predicted last week between would-be queenmaker Dacre and seasoned kingmaker Murdoch has come to pass.

Dacre, with his favourite candidate way out in the lead at present, is eager to prevent a final showdown between May and Gove (rather than one between May and Leadsom) in the belief that Tory party members, as distinct from the party’s MPs, will favour Gove.

According to the Mail’s page 1 story on Tuesday, and repeated in an inside spread, there is a plot by Gove supporters (such as Murdoch’s papers) to ensure “novice” Leadsom is kept off the final ballot.

The Times carried a page lead challenging Leadsom’s claims to have been an investment banker who managed billions of pounds’ worth of funds while working for Invesco Perpetual.

It quoted a former colleague, Robert Stephens, as saying that Leadsom “did not manage any teams, large or small, and she certainly did not manage any funds”.

It also revealed that in a previous job, at an investment fund run by her brother-in-law, Leadsom was registered as the marketing director rather than her claim to be its managing director.

The Sun, in a spread headlined “Must be May v Gove”, carried a sidebar that also mentioned “questions” having been raised about Leadsom’s account of her financial career. It further accused her of extremist views, alleging that she had attacked gay adoption and blamed the killing of a child on sex outside marriage.

Back at the Times, columnist Danny Finkelstein weighed in with an argument against the selection of “a complete novice” by the party’s membership. Should Leadsom win, he wrote, she would lack legitimacy, so it would necessitate a general election.

I very much doubt that the Daily Telegraph’s Philip Johnston is party to any conspiracy. But he also argued against Leadsom’s candidacy on the grounds that she is too inexperienced. To avoid either her or Gove winning, he preferred a “coronation” for May.



The Telegraph has yet to endorse anyone. But its columnist, Boris Johnson, has plumped for Leadsom, a very obvious snub of Gove, the former ally who knifed him.

As for the other major Tory-supporting paper, the Daily Express, it has refused so far to name who it favours.

Unsurprisingly, the Labourite Daily Mirror couldn’t stomach any of them: “The more we learn of the contenders, the more worried we should be.” So who did it want in government?

Its final sentence, given the turmoil in the Labour party and the headline to its editorial, “Don’t skirt the issues”, was a gem: “What the country requires at the moment is a government that is not Tory.” What? Lib-Dem? Green? Ukip?