First to depart was Esther McVey, one of only two female candidates, after she appeared to endorse homophobia by supporting parents picketing a school that taught L.G.B.T. rights.

Then Andrea Leadsom and Mark Harper, functional nonentities, were eliminated. Matt Hancock, who once returned from an environmental conference in a private plane, withdrew. Then we lost Dominic Raab, a former Brexit secretary (there are many) who has stolen Action Man’s jawline and once wrote an article headlined “We must end feminist bigotry.”

By Tuesday, five remained.

The campaign maverick was Rory Stewart. He knows how to use social media and has filmed himself walking around Britain actually speaking to people. The campaign Thatcherite was Sajid Javid, the home secretary, who spent some of the campaign wondering if he should change his Twitter handle to @TheSaj.

Then there was Michael Gove, the environment secretary, who admitted to taking cocaine at a party 20 years ago. He is an improbable cocaine user — he is an intellectual scuppered by goggly eyes — but this is an improbable campaign: men seething with ambition fighting for a cup poisoned by Brexit. His admission incited a flurry of drug confessions, as candidates tried to prove they would be more interesting than Theresa May, who has said that she worst thing she ever did was to run through a wheat field near Oxford. Mr. Hunt admitted to taking cannabis while traveling through India. Mr. Stewart bested this easily: He smoked opium at a wedding in Iran.

But they are all swallows around the juggernaut of Mr. Johnson, who Tories , as the Conservatives are known , believe is the only man who can protect them from Nigel Farage and a Britain blanketed in union flags, full of knife crime directed at immigrants.