Boris Johnson most likely to emerge as victor of UK Conservative Party leadership ballot
Conservative Party lawmakers will advance the race to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May today by holding a third leadership ballot.
The candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated. Ten lawmakers entered the premiership contest, but by the end of the week only two will remain. It will then be up to the 160,000 Conservative Party members across the UK to vote on which of these two will become Britain’s next prime minister.
Brexiteer Boris Johnson will almost certainty be one of those candidates. The race will centre on who he will contend with in the final Conservative popular vote. However, prospects for whoever that opponent may be appear grim—a recent poll of Conservative Party members showed Mr Johnson easily defeating any of the remaining candidates in a head-to-head race.
Mr Johnson’s insistence that he does not fear a no-deal “crash” Brexit is causing jitters among many in the UK and elsewhere. Brussels has repeatedly stressed that it will not negotiate a new deal. It cannot make substantial concessions for fear of looking weak in the face of increasing Euroscepticism across the bloc. That would suggest a no-deal outcome is likely; however, the possibility that Parliament would move to prevent a crash Brexit, possibly by triggering an election, is not off the table.
Three years and two prime ministers on from the 2016 referendum, it remains no clearer how or even whether Britain will leave the EU.
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