Jeremy Hunt was meant to be the competent one. But a messy campaign did for him | Isabel Hardman

The foreign secretary’s leadership campaign was slow out of the gate, but that alone doesn’t account for the widening gap

‘Vote early and vote often” is such a tired joke in political circles that perhaps Jeremy Hunt felt he had to invent his own. Instead of telling Conservative members to rush back to the postbox with their ballots this weekend, the Tory leadership contender has been asking them to take a week or so to consider their decision. His “vote slowly” slogan is “try before you buy”: if Tory members want to see what he’d be like as prime minister, then they should wait to watch this week’s TV debates.

It’s a lot of faith to put in just two television programmes, especially given the latest polling shows Boris Johnson to have a commanding lead over Hunt. But it’s also in keeping with Hunt’s main strategy throughout this campaign, which is to say yes to every single media bid, in order to get as much exposure as possible. Johnson, he claims, is dodging scrutiny by operating a “submarine campaign”. And yet all the TV interviews and newspaper profiles don’t seem to be working. What’s to say that this week’s programmes will change all of that?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2S5SXGQ
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