Tory leadership vote result - live: Boris Johnson tops poll despite being branded 'racist' and 'not fit for office' as Stewart eliminated
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Your support makes all the difference.Rory Stewart was eliminated from the Tory leadership race after the third round of voting by Conservative MPs on Wednesday, as Boris Johnson again topped the ballot with 143 votes.
Jeremy Hunt came second with 54 votes, narrowly ahead of Michael Gove with 51, while Sajid Javid picked up five extra votes to reach 38.
Mr Johnson was earlier called “racist” and “not fit for office” during PMQs by Ian Blackford, the SNP leader in the Commons.
Senior Labour MPs put pressure on leader Jeremy Corbyn to back a second Brexit referendum at a shadow cabinet meeting.
Nigel Farage, meanwhile, claimed the Brexit Party could form an electoral pact with a Johnson-led Conservative Party to deliver a no deal exit.
See how the day unfolded below:
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Asked why he took off his tie during the TV debate, Mr Stewart said: "I took off my tie, I think, because I wanted to take my tie off.
"And, it seemed like a good idea at the time."
Boris Johnson's remarks about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian mother imprisoned in Iran, had "traumatic effects", her husband has said. Ashley Cowburn has the story:
Mr Hunt said he was unclear whether Boris Johnson would guarantee taking the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
The foreign secretary told the Today programme: "Well, I am not entirely sure what he believes on this, having listened to him last night.
"You have to think these things through because prime ministers have to make these judgments."
Mr Hunt said the Tory Party has to be "whiter than white ourselves" as he backed an independent inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia in the party.
"I think we should have an independent inquiry because the cancer of racism and prejudice is not restricted to any one political party," he told the Today programme.
"We have been very vociferous calling out Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism and if we are going to do that, and I think we are right to do that, then we have to be whiter than white ourselves."
BBC presenter Nicky Campbell has apologised after an imam who questioned the Tory leadership contenders about Islamophobia was found to have made critical comments about Israel.
Mr Campbell, who had Abdullah Patel on his breakfast show on BBC Radio 5 Live the morning after the live TV debate, said the imam had made "extremely disturbing" remarks on Twitter, and he was "sorry" the broadcaster had not checked beforehand.
In tweets unearthed by the Guido Fawkes website, Mr Patel wrote: "Every Political figure on the Zionist's payroll is scaring the world about Corbyn. They don't like him. He seems best suited to tackle them!"
He also shared an image endorsing the relocation of Israel to the US as a way of solving the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Mr Patel has since taken down his Twitter account.
Mr Campbell tweeted: "I would like to apologise. We had the Imam from the BBC Tory leadership debate on our programme this morning. His social media comments have been extremely disturbing. We should have checked. We didn't. I'm sorry."
A spokeswoman for Mr Stewart's leadership campaign confirmed conversations about a joint ticket with Mr Gove had been held, but stressed "Rory wants to lead".
She said: "Clearly at some point people will need to combine teams.
"But any team that gets combined, Rory wants to lead it - Rory believes he is the only one with a chance to beat Boris in the final two and to provide the clearest choice.
"He's the one out polling in the areas we need to win.
"Rory's in this to win, whether on his own or with other people coming behind him - and go all the way to the final two and Number 10."
The imam who questioned the Tory leadership contenders during the BBC debate - who had previously made critical comments about Israel - would not have been selected if the broadcaster had been aware of the views he expressed, the corporation has said.
A BBC spokesman said: "We carried out background research into the online and social media profiles of all our questioners for last night's debate.
"Following the debate, one individual reactivated a public twitter account he had previously deactivated, whose tweets were not visible during our research period.
"Had we been aware of the views he expressed there he would not have been selected."
The imam has been suspended from all school duties at Al-Ashraf Primary School where he is deputy head after it emerged he had made critical comments about Israel.
Yakub Patel, the chairman of the Al-Madani Educational Trust, said it a statement on the school's website: "Following some of the comments attributed to Mr Patel in the media this morning, the trust has decided to suspend him from all school duties with immediate effect until a full investigation is carried out.
"The school and trust do not share the views attributed to him."
Mr Raab, who was knocked out in the second round, has backed Mr Johnson to be the next prime minister.
He said Mr Johnson was the only candidate who would ensure the UK leaves the EU by 31 October. “The only candidate who will now do this is Boris Johnson — and so I’ll be supporting him to become our next prime minister," he told the Evening Standard.
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