Boris Johnson surges ahead in Conservative leadership election

We now know that the next Prime Minister will not be a woman. And after the first round of voting, the battle is now on to be the candidate who joins Boris Johnson in the final vote of the Tory membership.

That’s because with support from well over a third of Conservative MPs Boris Johnson already has enough votes to give him a place in the last two.

His next closest rival Jeremy Hunt was almost seventy votes behind him, closely followed by Michael Gove. Four others, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart also made it through to the second round next week.

Andrea Leadsom, Mark Harper and Esther McVey all failed to get enough votes to continue.