Boris Johnson Hasn’t Heard the Last of Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart may only have scraped through Thursday's vote in the Tory leadership race, but his criticisms of the front-runner aren’t going away.
Still in the race?
Photographer: Luke MacGregor/BloombergRory who? The surprise in the Thursday’s Conservative Party leadership election wasn’t that Boris Johnson won. It was that Rory Stewart scraped through to the next round of voting. He may not get much further, but his name is still worth remembering.
Few expected the relative unknown to last this long. He had nowhere near the support of Johnson, whose frontrunner status looks unassailable. But Stewart’s campaign of home truths and warnings about fairy tale solutions may come back to haunt the favorite. Whoever wins the final vote by party members will be confronted with the same compromises on Brexit that turned the party base against Theresa May. Stewart was explicit about this; his rival has been anything but.