Former Brexit minister Dominic Raab (45) is no longer in the race to succeed Theresa May as British Prime Minister. In the second round of internal voting among 313 MPs from the Conservative Party, he was the only dropout on Tuesday evening.
Raab received thirty votes, three of them too few to prevent an early elimination.
Boris Johnson saw his favorite role once again confirmed. He received no fewer than 126 votes. Also to the next voting round are Jeremy Hunt (46 votes), Michael Gove (41 votes), Rory Stewart (37 votes) and Sajid Javid (33 votes).
Former chairman of the Lower House Andrea Leadsom had already lost weight in the first round.
The fact that Raab received too few votes can be called remarkable at least. In the first round of voting, he kept Javid and Stewart under his control. Moreover, Raab is considered a political heavyweight.
However, what was bothering Raab was his inconsistency. As a Brexit minister, he was the man who negotiated the May exit agreement with the EU, but afterwards he turned out to be one of the fiercest critics of the deal. At the end of March he made another turn and said he would vote for May’s agreement in the Lower House.
Raab is a Brexiteer who argued for a separation from the European Union long before the referendum. He has no trouble with a hard Brexit. The politician announced his candidacy within one day of the announcement of May’s departure.
The Conservative Party holds voting rounds until there are two candidates left. After that, the approximately 160,000 members of the party may decide who the party leader should be.
The Conservative Party must choose a new leader because May’s position had become untenable after several times failing to steer her Brexit deal with the European Union through the House of Commons.
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