Will Boris Johnson be crowned as the new PM!

Boris Johnson HS By FCO (CC-BY-2.0)

Speculation is mounting that the former London Mayor and former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, could be crowned as the new Prime Minister without a vote of the Tory party membership.

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The rumour mill says that a whole raft of Tory MPs could end up backing Boris Johnson in his quest to replace Theresa May as the Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.

Boris already enjoys the support of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrew Bridgen and David Jones. Owen Paterson has just joined too. With others like Iain Duncan Smith expected to throw their weight behind him in the near future.

There is also talk that Steve Baker has decided not to stand himself and will also be backing Boris.

And if Boris ends up at the top of the pile after the parliamentary votes, then party grandees are saying he should be allowed to take up residence in Number Ten early, by dispensing with the party vote stage of the selection process.

This would mean that whoever was left in the leadership competition with him, would have to stand down from the race. Just like Andrea Leadsom did when Theresa May became PM.

The thinking behind this, is that polling shows Boris to be the favourite anyway, so the membership wouldn't be overly concerned with this outcome.

And the real benefit of this would be that Boris would be hitting Brexit much earlier than if they had to wait until right at the end of July.

And I assume they think this might give him the chance to rebuild trust in the Tories by giving him extra time to sort out the UK exit from the EU.

Currently the support numbers of MPs within the House of Commons for each candidate stack up like this:

Boris Johnson – 52

Jeremy Hunt – 33

Michael Gove – 32

Dominic Raab 24

Sajid Javid – 17

Matt Hancock – 12

Mark Harper – 6

Esther McVey – 6

Rory Stewart – 6

Sam Gyimah – 4

Andrea Leadsom – 4

But bear in mind there is a long way to go yet and as they say, a week is a long time in politics and these numbers will fluctuate as time goes on and the race progresses.

But is it right to just hold a coronation, instead of going to the membership?

And is it too late for the Tories now anyway?

Now I'm giving a shout out for a group of Brexiteers on Telegram who have come up with a simple idea to break the seeming press embargo on covering the Robin Tilbrook judicial review case on the legality of the first Article 50 extension that took our EU membership beyond 11 pm on the 29th march 2019.

In my layman's opinion this is a strong case and should be prioritised through the judicial review system and be given full press coverage.

The only danger is that it will progress very slowly and allow the government to outspend Tilbrook, so forcing him to drop the case.

The Telegram Brexiteers have come up with a simple leaflet and just want people to spread the word, hopefully leading to donations going towards funding Tilbrook's case.

The group can be found on Telegram in a group called 'Brexiteers public chat room', I've left a couple of links below.

Please check them out and see if you can help.

Sources:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9247869/boris-johnson-crowned-pm-tory-members-vote-brexit/