Boris Johnson’s team warned ministers that failing to publicly back him would destroy their careers amid a ‘dirty tricks’ backlash over the Tory leadership vote, it was claimed today.
One was warned that it would be ‘a shame if you failed to make progress’ by not swapping from a rival candidate quickly enough ahead of yesterday’s votes which saw Mr Johnson chosen to face Jeremy Hunt in the final two.
Supporters of Environment Secretary Michael Gove questioned whether Mr Johnson’s team arranged for some of the runaway favourite’s backers to ‘lend’ votes to the Foreign Secretary to ensure he got through – something it denies.
A source told MailOnline that a former supporter of the frontrunner’s eliminated fellow hardline Brexiteer Dominic Raab was warned to fall in line behind him by Gavin Williamson, his campaign chief.
Mr Williamson, a former chief whip, was said to have warned them: ‘If I wanted you to vote for someone else I’d tell you.’
Mr Johnson came first in the vote with 160, but Mr Hunt came home just two votes ahead of Mr Gove, 77-75 raising questioned about whether Mr Johnson’s team arranged for some of the runaway favourite’s backers to ‘lend’ votes to the Foreign Secretary
Mr Williamson, a former chief whip, was said to have warned a Dominic Raab backer: ‘If I wanted you to vote for someone else I’d tell you.’
Following the elimination of Sajid Javid from the race on Thursday morning with 34 votes, at least five of the Home Secretary’s supporters – Chris Philp, Chris Skidmore, Mims Davies, Kevin Foster and Mike Wood – said they would switch to Mr Johnson.
But the former foreign secretary’s vote tally only increased by three, raising eyebrows at Westminster.
It came as questions were raised over the way the vote was conducted, with 90 MPs allowed to vote by ‘proxy’ so they could choose their candidate despite not being there.
Mr Johnson came first in the vote with 160. But Mr Hunt came home just two votes ahead of Mr Gove, 77-75.
One supporter of Mr Johnson said that the result was revenge for the way that Mr Gove had turned on him in the last leadership race in 2016, going from his chief of staff to a rival candidate.
The source told the Times: ‘Gove stabbed us in the back — we’ve stabbed him in the front.’
The result in the fifth and final ballot came after Mr Gove had managed to finish second in the fourth round, sending shockwaves through the contest.
Mr Gove’s decision to stand for the leadership in 2016 scuppered Mr Johnson’s campaign and the wounds have not healed.
There was also widespread speculation – denied by Mr Johnson – that supporters of the frontrunner were being encouraged to vote tactically in order to prevent Mr Gove reaching the final ballot.
Boris Johnson supporter Johnny Mercer denied there were dark ops during the Tory leadership campaign.
He told the Today programme: ‘I have to be honest, I’m pretty close to Mr Johnson and the operation and the campaign, and I just haven’t seen it – I haven’t seen it going on, I’m not convinced it’s possible.’
Admitting some MPs may have ‘voted for different people at different times’, he added: ‘I don’t think there’s some sort of underhand operation and people like Mel Stride, who ran Michael’s operation, he has accepted that as well.
‘It’s a great story for the media, of course, as a sort of continuation of the drama from years ago, but in reality I don’t think it exists.’
Mr Hunt (pictured today in Worcester) is seen as a less vicious opponent for Mr Johnson in the runoff, which begins tomorrow
How Boris’s hitmen took out Gove: Hour by hour, the nods, winks and ‘dark dealings’ that helped Johnson’s backers hand him revenge over his most feared rival
The alcoves and recesses of the Palace of Westminster are built for plotting.
And early yesterday, as MPs arrived for the final two rounds in the Conservative leadership contest, the air was thick with conspiracy.
Certainly Team Michael Gove feared a plot was afoot, after a newspaper report that Boris Johnson’s camp wanted Mr Gove ‘humiliated’ in revenge for turning on their man in 2016. Back then, one Johnson ally said there was ‘a special place in hell’ reserved for Mr Gove. They hadn’t forgotten.
Yesterday, almost in anticipation, Gove supporters went on the offensive from the off, with one accusing Boris of wanting to ‘gerrymander’ the result.
The theory was straightforward. Boris would prefer the run-off to be against Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who backed Remain in 2016, rather than Mr Gove, a fierce intellectual who has impeccable Brexiteer credentials. Indeeed in private, Team Gove believe the vote has been rigged all week.
They muttered darkly that Rory Stewart’s numbers were inflated to remove Dominic Raab, another Brexiteer threat to Boris, and Sajid Javid’s vote was pushed up to keep him in the race and stop his supporters going to Mr Gove.
All fingers pointed at one man: Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip and Defence Secretary who seemed to revel in his reputation for Machiavellian dark arts.
There was another issue raising paranoia levels yesterday: the large number of proxy votes. Around ninety Tory MPs were not physically in the Commons.
Boris Johnson in his office today. Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson sets out his vision saying he wants to do for the whole country what he did for the capital as Mayor of London and promises to reach out beyond Conservative voters
All fingers pointed at one man: Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip and Defence Secretary who seemed to revel in his reputation for Machiavellian dark arts
Mr Johnson (pictured being driven away from Parliament today) cemented his position as the overwhelming favourite by winning support from 160 MPs
Jeremy Hunt leaves the Houses of Parliament following the fifth this evening. He will now go head-to-head against Mr Johnson in the race to become the next Prime Minister
Some were enjoying the Ascot races, others were in constituencies and nominated someone else to cast votes on their behalf. Apart from their proxy, no-one, not even the MPs themselves, would know where the vote had gone.
In plotting hands, this could be a powerful weapon. One senior campaign source warned: ‘It is always a good idea to trust someone whose interests align with your own.’
After seeing his vote collapse on Wednesday, Mr Stewart accused the Boris camp of sharp practice, saying ‘five or ten proxy votes’ had been lent to other campaigns.
Team Boris issued fervent denials, and insisted they just wanted to maximise their vote. One Boris supporter claimed Mr Stewart was bitter after his support ‘on Twitter’ didn’t translate into results, saying: ‘The truth hurts.’
Asked outside the voting room whether he knew anything about ‘dark arts’ Mr Johnson insisted: ‘No.’ When the first result came, at 1pm, it was good news for Mr Gove. Mr Johnson marched on to 157 – more than half the Tory parliamentary party – but Mr Gove had picked up ten votes, and was now two ahead of Mr Hunt.
Meanwhile Mr Javid was eliminated. Had the anti-Gove plot failed? Within minutes the Gove and Hunt camps were at each other’s throats.
A Hunt source issued a warning about the final round being dominated by the ‘personal psychodrama’ of Boris vs Gove.
Gove supporters desperately tried to neutralise the accusation, promising a ‘civilised debate’.
They also sought to ‘peel off’ Mr Johnson’s Brexiteers.
Gove campaign manager Mel Stride texted several MPs saying Mr Johnson was ‘secure in the final run off’ and they should consider backing Mr Gove so ‘we can have two Brexiteers in the final’. Where would Javid’s 34 votes go?
One Johnson supporter told the Mail, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘We’re not telling people to vote for Jeremy but if people feel inclined to go that way, what’s to stop them?’
Team Boris had good reason to be confident about their numbers holding up. For in a remarkable feat of organisation, they had successfully predicted exactly how many votes their man would get in two of the initial counts. The person running Mr Johnson’s ‘book’ of supporters was Grant Shapps, the former Tory chairman cast into the wilderness by Theresa May and later accused of over a botched plot to oust her.
His Excel spreadsheet contained thousands of entries. Down one side were the names of all 313 Tory MPs and across pages and pages of data about them – personal biography, policy interests, political affiliations and records of whether they had met Mr Johnson, or spoken on the phone to him.
He also recorded which MPs were apparently backing his man. But how to tell which were telling the truth? Early in the contest, Mr Johnson had a core of trusted supporters who were sent out to gather information. Without always revealing who they were backing, they would ask MPs who they were voting for. By the end this army of ‘handlers’ grew to 70.
Friends of Mr Shapps said he had spent his time on the backbenches reading up on former US president Lyndon Johnson. LBJ said the first rule of politics was to ‘learn how to count’. It was a lesson Mr Johnson, and his team, learned well.
By yesterday, it meant Team Boris had a trove of information on every MP, and a good idea about how the votes would play out.
When the result came in at 6pm, Mr Hunt had beaten Mr Gove into second place by just two votes. Mr Gove issued a gracious concession message and congratulated the two winners. But his supporters screamed ‘carve up’.
‘If you are that far ahead you get to name your opponent. They knew which candidate they wanted in the final,’ said one. Beforehand, Mr Gove’s campaign estimated – correctly – that around a third of Javid votes would go their way, and the rest would go to Boris.
The final piece of evidence, which is hard to explain other than by vote lending, is that Mr Johnson’s total increased by four between the two rounds, fewer than the number of MPs who said publicly they would support him. A Johnson source insisted the claims were ‘nonsense’. But seasoned observers will suspect otherwise.
Trade Secretary (and Hunt backer) Dr Liam Fox smiled: ‘I’m sure it’s not organised. Perish the thought!’.
The Environment Secretary, whose campaign at one stage looked to be fatally damaged by his cocaine admission, had dramatically leapfrogged ahead of Mr Hunt in the fourth ballot earlier today.
But the Foreign Secretary managed to claw his way back to secure a place in the head-to-head by just two votes this evening, amid claims that he might have been ‘loaned’ backers by Mr Johnson to settle old scores.
Many of Mr Johnson’s acolytes have never forgiven Mr Gove for betraying him in the 2016 leadership contest, when he pulled his support at the last second and launched his own abortive bid.
There were gasps as the incredibly close result of the fifth ballot was announced in committee room 14 in Parliament this evening, with the front runner securing 160 votes, Mr Hunt 77 and Mr Gove 75.
The figures immediately fuelled rampant speculation about tactical voting, as Mr Johnson only increased his tally by three votes between the final rounds.
After Sajid Javid was eliminated this afternoon, at least four of his 34 supporters publicly declared they were going to back the favourite.
Mr Javid himself was also thought to have been ready to line up behind Mr Johnson – potentially in return for getting the plum post of Chancellor.
In contrast to Mr Johnson’s paltry haul in the final ballot, Mr Hunt gained 18 backers, and Mr Gove 14.
Mr Johnson’s allies had been accused of plotting an ‘Oxford Union knifing’ and the political equivalent of ‘revenge porn’ as they tried to stop Mr Gove getting into the run off.
Michael Gove looked downcast as he left Parliament this evening having been knocked out of the Conservative leadership race
Gove, pictured leaving Parliament, narrowly came last in the voting missing out on the final round by two votes to Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt
There are claims Mr Johnson’s allies helped evict Mr Gove (pictured left at Parliament today) from the contest, with Jeremy Hunt (right) taking the second spot in the run-off
Sajid Javid was eliminated after coming last in the latest ballot of MPs today – securing just 34 votes from MPs