Boris Johnson once said that his favorite movie scene is “the multi-pay murders at the end of The Godfather.” It didn’t take long for the prime minister to take revenge on his rival, Jeremy Hunt.
Hunt Humor, who ran against Johnson in 2019, is still looking at number 10 and this week urged his Conservative MPs to stand up against Johnson, because the party “did not give the British people the leadership they deserve” .
The prime minister survived a subsequent censure vote on Monday by 211 votes to 148, but was seriously injured. Hunt, former Secretary of State, would be the “anti-Boris”: manager, impeccable, a little boring.
Some in Johnson’s circle pondered whether the prime minister could try to keep his enemy close, possibly offering Hunt the role of chancellor of the Treasury. But most laughed at the idea: it’s not Johnson’s style.
Instead, Hunt was briefly informed that the Johnson administration had approved the drilling of hydrocarbons in its bucolic southwestern Surrey constituency, a decision that left the environmentalist stammering: “Ridiculous.”
The prospect of Dunsfold Township becoming a Dallas-less county of home has caused a local apoplexy and is a gift for Hunt’s rivals for the seat. This is unlikely to bother Johnson.
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt, 55, has been in Johnson’s queue for several years, convinced that at some point Conservative MPs will get tired of the Prime Minister’s chaotic style. Hunt would be the man to pick up the pieces.
But some wonder if he wants the top job enough. His comrades have urged him to campaign more aggressively: “In politics, power is not given, it is taken,” says an ally.
After Monday’s coup nearly failed, Hunt kept his head down. “Jeremy believes the party will be decided without the need for help to do so,” says one supporter. “Jeremy says he’s not a natural destabilizer and he probably wouldn’t do very well if he tried.”
The son of a senior Royal Navy admiral and raised in a picturesque village in Surrey, Hunt has the classic credentials of the establishment: head of the expensive Charterhouse school, followed by a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from the university. of Oxford.
He became an entrepreneur and taught English in Japan for two years; his first business included a failed attempt to export jam to the country. His wife, Lucia Guo, is Chinese, although she made a “terrible” mistake when she described her as “Japanese” on her first visit to Beijing as Secretary of State. The couple has a son and two daughters.
Finally, he created Hotcourses, which manages worldwide listings websites for education, in the 1990s. He met Guo at a Hotcourses event at the University of Warwick and when the company was finally sold in 2017, he earned £ 14 million.
Chosen in 2005, he fitted in perfectly with the mold of David Cameron’s new Conservative party. The right-wing economy – an ally says Hunt is “a right thatcherite” – was socially liberal and embraced ecological issues.
He became secretary of culture in Cameron’s first cabinet in 2010, overseeing the 2012 London Olympics, before rising to the job of leading the British health service in a time of austerity. It was a daunting political challenge, but he became the longest-serving health secretary in the UK. Along the way, he picked up enemies in the NHS, especially after measures to change doctors’ contracts to address the problem of high weekend mortality rates.
Nadine Dorries, secretary of culture and loyal to Johnson, this week claimed that Hunt had left the NHS unprepared for Covid and, when the virus struck, advocated harsh Chinese-style blocking measures. “Your handling of the pandemic would have been a disaster,” he said. Since leaving the cabinet, his role as chair of the Commons Health Committee has given him a continued voice over the NHS issues that still concern him.
Hunt campaigned for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum, but then, in a somewhat improbable way, declared a year later that he thought Brexit was a good idea after all, after witnessing “arrogance. “of the European Commission in the exit negotiations.
It was a clear signal that he was preparing for a first-place race in a party where it is now essential to be pro-Brexit. After becoming Secretary of State in 2018 under Theresa May, replacing Johnson, who stormed the Brexit deal proposed by May, she had the ideal platform.
May’s resignation a year later saw Hunt clash with Johnson to become prime minister. In meetings with party members, his soft technocratic style contrasted with Johnson’s erratic populism.
But there was a problem. “Every night you came to think that Jeremy had won the debate, but the next morning people didn’t remember anything he said,” one figure from his leadership campaign admitted. In the end, Johnson got a decisive victory.
Johnson offered the defeated Hunt a job in his office as secretary of defense, a degradation. Hunt refused. “He thought the whole government would collapse and he could spill over and say‘ I told you so, ’” an ally said. Others were furious. “Leading the army, navy and air force is never a job you reject, especially not the Conservative party,” a former minister said.
Admirers say Hunt is right to avoid campaigning for a job when there is no vacancy, but that behind the calm, polite exterior is a man with ambition. “It has a steel interior, it’s hard,” says one.
Some Conservatives, especially those representing the seats in the north of England that Johnson won in the 2019 election, believe that Hunt in the far south would be an electoral responsibility. “It would be a disaster,” says a Conservative MP from the north. “Unable to communicate with my voters.”
But Andrew Mitchell, the former Conservative leader, says Hunt would ultimately succeed because Conservative MPs want three things in a new leader: “Someone not tainted by Boris, someone with significant government experience and someone who is clearly moral.”
george.parker@ft.com, sebastian.payne@ft.com