Tory party members to decide next U.K. leader

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Boris Johnson has pulled away in the race to become Britain’s next prime minister despite growing questions about how he would get the country out of the European Union.

Best known for his floppy hair, frumpy suits and verbal slip ups, Mr. Johnson easily won the last in a series of votes among fellow Tory MPs on Thursday that reduced the number of candidates to replace Theresa May as Conservative leader and prime minister to two from 10. Mr. Johnson took 160 out of 313 votes in the final ballot, and will face the second-place finisher, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who had the support of 77 MPs. About 160,000 party members will choose the new leader in a mail-in vote next month. The winner is expected to take over from Ms. May in late July. Polls show Mr. Johnson with about 70 per cent support among members compared with 26 per cent for Mr. Hunt.

Mr. Johnson would face a daunting task should he become prime minister. The United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31, but despite nearly three years of negotiations, still has no agreement on the terms of its departure or any deal on future trade relations. Mr. Johnson has been a fierce critic of Ms. May’s Brexit strategy, including a deal she struck with the EU last year. He resigned as foreign secretary over Ms. May’s approach and once described her agreement with the EU as a “suicide vest” that would destroy the country. His attacks contributed to Ms. May’s downfall, and she was forced out as party leader last month after failing three times to win parliamentary approval for her agreement.

The inability to deliver Brexit has hurt the Conservatives, and support for the party has plummeted in most opinion polls. The Tories finished fifth in recent elections to the European Parliament and suffered huge setbacks in local elections in May. The main threat has come from the newly created Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, who has campaigned for the United Kingdom to leave the EU without a deal and trade with the bloc on World Trade Organization terms.

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Many Tory members see Mr. Johnson as a credible rival to Mr. Farage, and someone who can reinvigorate the party. He’s a colourful campaigner who won two terms as mayor of London despite strong opposition from the Labour Party. He also has solid credentials as a “Brexiteer,” having co-chaired the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum, in which 52 per cent of voters backed Brexit. Conservative Party members are even more pro-Brexit than the public, with polls showing 72 per cent voted leave in 2016 and 57 per cent support exiting without a deal.

Mr. Johnson has tapped into that pro-Brexit sentiment by insisting during the leadership race that he would lead the country out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal. He has also said he would withhold £39-billion ($65.4-billion) the country owes the EU to push for an agreement. However, he hasn’t produced any details on how he would succeed where Ms. May failed, and during a televised debate on Tuesday, he softened his position somewhat, saying that leaving on Oct. 31 was “eminently feasible.” He also refused to guarantee the country would leave then.

EU officials say Ms. May’s deal cannot be changed, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Thursday urged Mr. Johnson to rethink his position. “I hope that [the] campaign is done in poetry, and governing is in prose, as I think Churchill said once,” Mr. Rutte told the BBC before a summit of EU leaders in Brussels. “With a hard Brexit, even with a normal Brexit, the U.K. will be a different country. It will be a diminished country. It is unavoidable.”

Mr. Hunt, a long-time cabinet minister, has been less clear-cut about Brexit. He voted for the United Kingdom to remain in the EU in 2016, but he has become a convert, and indicated recently that he was prepared to take the country out of the EU without a deal. However, he has also said he would delay Brexit if an agreement could be struck.

Mr. Johnson has a history of gaffes. As foreign secretary, he made an ill-timed comment about a British-Iranian woman being held in Iran as a spy, prompting an extension to her prison term. Last year, he wrote in a newspaper column that Muslim women who wore burkas looked like “letter boxes,” and was famously and profanely dismissive of business leaders who decried a no-deal Brexit.