Chris

I understand the recognition argument so far as it affects the other candidates but that argument seems to depend on increased recognition for, say Jeremy Hunt, resulting in less recognition for Boris Johnson. The ComRes poll data that the Torygraph has relied on for its headline doesn’t ask voters to choose between candidates, it asks them who they would vote for in a general election, multiple times, each time with a different person in charge of the Tory party.

I totally get that the Torygraph is waving a flag for Boris and is interpreting a dataset that has piled hypothetical situations upon hypothetical situations to get where it is. I totally get that uniform swing calculations are not an exact science, and that predicting a Tory win in Green Central is the proof of the pudding.

Nevertheless, there is a clear difference in public perception of the Tory leadership candidates. Boris is, as things stand, the clear favourite among them as far as the public is concerned. The liberal left - which I am pretty much certain counts Rob Ford amongst its number quite regardless of the level of impartiality required by his day job, in which capacity he is not tweeting today - is terrified of Johnson precisely because they understand these polls are telling them they should be. Technical rebuttals of the methodology and interpretation try, and fail, to obfuscate the obvious, basic truth that as of right now, BoJo has an advantage over the other candidates. The Left knows this and has been frantically going after him for weeks to try and poison the well. They really, really don’t want him to get the job, not just because he’s a Tory, not just because of his personal failings, but because he is the Tories’ best chance of delivering Brexit and winning an election. And if he does that, the Corbyn project is finished.