Johnson's ultimate revenge on Gove - but were there dirty tricks?
Many in the Johnson camp never forgave Mr Gove for torpedoing their man's leadership bid in 2016 - have they had their revenge?
Friday 21 June 2019 16:10, UK
"Revenge is a dish best served cold," chuckled one battle-hardened Boris Johnson supporter minutes after Michael Gove was knocked out the race.
"To lose by two votes: he'll forever be wondering what if, what if, there's no peace in that."
If it sounds like this particular politician was revelling in the environment secretary's misfortune, it's because he was.
Many in the Johnson camp have never forgiven Mr Gove for torpedoing their man's leadership bid in 2016 by knifing Mr Johnson in order to run himself. Three years on, they exacted their revenge by knocking Mr Johnson's former Vote Leave running mate out the race by just two votes.
In Westminster, rival camps were convinced of dirty play by the Johnson team, with voting rounds supporting the theory some of Mr Johnson's allies might have lent support to different camps in order to knock rivals out.
How, asked one Gove supporter, was it that remainer Rory Stewart lost 10 votes in the third round of voting (his vote dropped to 27), having put on 18 votes in round two (picking up 37 votes)?
And why did Mr Johnson only put on three more votes in the final round (going from 157 to 160 votes) after five of Home Secretary Sajid Javid's supporters publicly said they would switch to him?
Liam Fox, the trade secretary, emerging into the committee corridor on Thursday afternoon after casting his vote (for Mr Hunt), joked there was "more churn" in these voting rounds "than the average washing machine".
Team Johnson was adamant that no skulduggery was going on, but I found plenty of people in rival camps who didn't really believe that.
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Throughout the week of voting, there was talk of aggressive arm-twisting by MPs to come out early and publicly for Mr Johnson or risk career suicide. And there was also the chatter of vote lending in order to make Mr Johnson's progress as smooth as possible.
It could well have culminated in Johnson allies taking out fellow Brexiteer and agitant Michael Gove in the cruellest of manners.
Mel Stride, Mr Gove's campaign manager, told me after the results that he did think it was a fair fight.
"I think there was a lot of speculation of the possibility that one of the particular campaigns might have corralled together centrally a number of votes to then deliver those on block and cause a change on who got in for the second place.
"If you look at the numbers, it appears to me that didn't happen or if it did happen they were rather brilliant in getting down to just a margin of two."
From my earlier phone call with one of Mr Johnson's camp, I think perhaps the Johnson team - led by whip Gavin Williamson and keeper-of-the-supporter-list Grant Shapps - were brilliant.
Mr Shapps showed a canny knack for predicting the exact number of votes through the rounds - I saw evidence - while Mr Williamson, a former chief whip to Theresa May, prides himself on precise execution.
If you were Mr Williamson, you could not have invented a better result. Mr Johnson romps home (he won over half of the vote), while Mr Gove is out by a margin that offers no proof of skulduggery, while also providing maximum pain for his boss's arch enemy. Neat.
We'll probably never know whether it was a fair fight or not, but what we do know is that Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt are in the final two - and this is the exact outcome that frontrunner Mr Johnson would have hoped for.
Because nearly two-thirds of the Conservative Party members who now get to decide their new leader are no-deal Brexiteers, Mr Johnson is preaching to the converted. He is the champion of Brexit versus the continuity candidate.
Those in his team admitted ahead of the final round of voting on Thursday that Mr Hunt was a far more attractive option to take on than Mr Gove.
The former - a remainer - would offer up a civilised, policy-based battle, while the latter - a Brexiteer - would make it personal and take chunks out of his rival in order to win the fight.
Instead Mr Johnson begins the 16 rounds of hustings with party members in poll position. A runaway favourite with party members - his dream to be prime minister almost in his reach.