A week ago, Boris Johnson used his vast lead at the MPs’ stage of the Conservative leadership contest to ensure the candidate he deemed most beatable, Jeremy Hunt, joined him in the final two.



While Hunt only pipped Michael Gove to a place on the ballot paper thanks to votes lent to him by Johnson, the foreign secretary has shown already he will not be a pushover. The man whom his own backers agree is a huge underdog has vowed to give the Brexiteer favourite “the fight of his life”.

Hunt faces an epic challenge in overturning the deficit with Tory members and proving to a sceptical, largely Leave-voting base that a Remain-backer can take the UK out of the EU.

A ConservativeHome poll published on Thursday underlined the scale of this task, giving Johnson a 36-point lead over his rival with party members — and more than double his support. Johnson’s rating is up four points on the previous week despite what was generally understood to have been a bad few days for the frontrunner.

In conversations with BuzzFeed News, Hunt’s allies explained why they believe the race is closer than the ConHome poll suggests, what they see as their candidate’s path to victory, and their worries about where they think the campaign is struggling to make up the ground.

Hunt feels his only chance of upsetting the odds is a high-octane campaign showing voters “the real Jeremy”, an air war based on a Stakhanovite media blitz and vigorous social media activity, and a ground game focussed on convincing members he has the personality to deliver Brexit — and Johnson does not.

But his most senior allies accept that his tilt for the premiership has suffered from internal concerns that his criticism of Johnson has gone too far and alienated the Tory grassroots, that his decision not to commit to leaving the EU on Oct. 31 has cost him with Leave-supporting Tory members, and that his description of that date as a “fake deadline” was a damaging error that has opened him up to suspicions among Brexiteers that he could delay Brexit indefinitely.

Hunt’s aides insist the battle for Downing Street is not a foregone conclusion and is in fact closer than the conventional wisdom at Westminster, which assumes that Johnson’s Leave credentials all but guarantee him to make it to Number 10. Notably, fears that the contest is tighter than generally believed are shared by some in the Johnson camp.

One member of Hunt’s team told BuzzFeed News that the campaign is working on the basis that, of the estimated 160,000 Tory party members who will elect the next prime minister, around 80,000 will have already made their decision and another 80,000 votes are still up for grabs. While the decideds may have split for Johnson, the undecideds are all to play for.

Hunt has attempted to capitalise on media stories about Johnson’s private life, believing that, regardless of the ConHome poll, the contest is now more competitive as a result. “They used to talk about it being a coronation. No one’s talking about a coronation anymore,” said an aide.

Allies say Hunt has taken inspiration from Rory Stewart’s combative approach during his own short-lived campaign. He has launched a series of criticisms of his opponent, including a Times article that branded him a “coward” for dodging a TV debate at the height of media scrutiny about his personal conduct.