Michael Gove hits the right notes with Oasis song as Tory leadership rivals battle it out in a karaoke session
Stephen Crabb performed rousing rendition of Queen hit 'Don't Stop Me Now'
MICHAEL Gove hit the right notes last night with a rousing rendition of an Oasis classic as the Tory leadership rivals battled it out in a bizarre karaoke session.
Following intense hustings in front of their Tory Commons colleagues Theresa May, Mr Gove, Stephen Crabb and Liam Fox joined fellow Conservatives to let their hair down with a singalong in an MP's office.
Only Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom failed to attend after her disastrous performance last night as she was grilled by MPs.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Crabb pushed his leadership message by performing Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Know while Mr Gove sang Oasis’s Champagne Supernova as well as the Beatles’ Hey Jude.
But one MP still angry at the Justice Secretary’s knifing of Boris Johnson quipped: “It sounded more like Hey Judas to me”.
Frontrunner Ms May walked in just as others were signing the Elvis Costello ballad ‘She’.
That lead to more than a dozen of her supporters joining in to serenade the Home Secretary.
The night was organised by a mid-ranking Tory minister, Deputy Commons Leader Therese Coffey.
Ms Coffey told The Sun: “We’re still a strong team and last night proved we are very harmonious together”.
They now all have a nervous wait as Tory MPs have been voting since 11am on a new leader after David Cameron decided to stand down following the Brexit vote.
When asked how he voted Gove joked: "It was a tough choice.
"I voted for a Scotsman."
It is obviously thought he means himself, although his fellow leadership rival Dr Fox is Scottish - and Crabb was born in Scotland.
Just after the first round of the voting opened at 11am Crabb supporter Simon Hoare proclaimed himself as the first to vote in the leadership contest, tweeting:
The first round of the Tories leadership contest comes on the day a removal van was spotted going in to the back of Downing Street.
With the timeline for the leadership election, David Cameron will be moving out of No10 Downing Street by September 9 when the winner is announced.
Justice Secretary Michael Gove said he did not originally want to stand in the contest but then realised he had to for the good of the country.
And today he has been tweeting some of his ideas if he was to become the next Tory Party leader.
He has spoken about transforming the economy so everyone can get a good, secure job with a decent wage and how it is important to renegotiate a new relationship with the EU.
Gove was firmly on the side of Leave during the EU referendum and believes the next Prime Minister cannot be from the Remain campaign.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, his supporter Education Secretary Nicky Morgan warned MPs to not vote for someone who supported Remain.
In doing so she is trying to warn people away from voting for the Home Secretary Theresa May, who is thought to be the favourite for the top job.
Morgan said: “The reason I decided not to stand was because the feedback I got from colleagues and party members was that because we had this Leave vote ... it was somebody who voted Leave who should be there at the helm, negotiating our exit from the EU.”
RELATED STORIES
Asked about accusations that Gove caused Boris Johnson to withdraw from the leadership race, she said: "I would consider that to be politics where people really care about the outcomes, and they care what needs to be done for the country."
Speaking on Sky News, leadership hopeful Liam Fox said if he is elected he will trigger Article 50 - the formal process of Britain leaving the EU - by the end of the year.
And he said he'd set a deadline of our exit by January 1, 2019.
"I think it's important to offer the voters who was in tune with them on the referendum and also who has experience on the international stage.
"This is not Britain's Got Talent. This is not the time for novelty."
Boris Johnson has backed fellow Leave campaigner Andrea Leadsom, saying she has "the zap, the drive and the determination" to lead the country.
His move came as a significant boost to the Energy Minister after she was said to have performed poorly in front of Tory MPs at a leadership hustings in Westminster last night.
Speaking to Sky News as he left his home to cast his vote, Johnson said: "It's time for a candidate that will embody change and dynamism and a forward-looking approach.
“We've had a lot of gloom.
"Andrea has massive experience of finance, she understands the European issue backwards and she has a very positive vision for what this country can achieve outside the European Union."
Today she will learn how much that poor performance counts when the first round of voting is announced this evening.
Out of the five candidates – Theresa May, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Stephen Crabb and Liam Fox – the one who receives the lowest number of nominations will be forced to drop out.
Then on Thursday another ballot takes place – with again the bottom-placed candidate dropping out, in what is known as an “exhaustive ballot”.
Choosing a successor to David Cameron - the timetable
TODAY: First round of voting from 11am to 6pm. The result is expected at about 7pm.
After all the votes are counted the person with the lowest number of nominations will drop out.
THURSDAY: Second round of voting. Again the bottom-placed candidate drops out, in what is known as an “exhaustive ballot”.
Repeated every Tuesday and Thursday until there are only two candidates left.
JULY AND AUGUST: The candidates spend their summers campaigning. People who have been Tory members for more than three months vote by post.
SEPTEMBER 8: The closing day for members to make their decision.
SEPTEMBER 9: The result is announced.
OCTOBER 2: New leader heads up the Tory party conference.
Other candidates may choose to drop out at any time “up to 24 hours of the opening of the ballot” if they no longer feel they can win, or wish to change support.
But if they all choose to stay in until eliminated, there will be a third ballot of MPs next Tuesday, with the final vote to whittle down the candidates from three to two.
Once only two candidates remain, then those names are put to a vote by Conservative Party members, of whom there are around 150,000.
Who are the five candidates who want to become the next Tory leader?
Here are the runners and riders in the race to replace David Cameron:
Theresa May, 59
The current Home Secretary, who has been in place since 2010, is the favourite with bookmakers to enter Downing Street and has by far the most nominations from her Commons colleagues.
She was born in Eastbourne, the daughter of an Anglican vicar, and read Geography at Oxford University before starting her career at the Bank of England, and becoming the MP for Maidenhead in 1997.
Sometimes labelled the ice queen of the Cabinet, she is not part of David Cameron’s inner circle, but has impressed with her hard work and ability to stick around in the Home Office – where political careers often go to die.
She is married to husband Phillip and has no children, and is a keen cook – revealing she owns more than 100 recipe books.
Michael Gove, 48
The current Justice Secretary, he was the co-chair of the Vote Leave campaign – and though initially expected to back Boris Johnson he announced his own surprise bid last Thursday.
He was brought up by Labour-supporting adoptive parents in Aberdeen, with his father owning a fishing business.
He studied English at Oxford on a scholarship before becoming a journalist with The Times, and was elected to parliament as the MP for Surrey Heath in 2005.
He was made Education Secretary in the coalition government, before being moved to become Chief Whip in 2014, and after last year’s general election he was elevated to Justice.
Married to journalist Sarah Vine, the couple have two children, he is known for his quiet approach belying his radical zeal – described as a “mixture of Jeeves and Che Guevara”.
Andrea Leadsom, 53
The Energy and climate change minister went from being a relative unknown to a leading light of the Brexit camp during the EU referendum.
She was brought up in Tring, Hertfordshire, by a divorced mother in a terraced house with an outside toilet.
After studying at Warwick University she embarked on a 25-year career in banking and finance, including senior positions at Barclays, before entering Parliament in 2010 as the MP for South Northamptonshire.
She was a Treasury minister before moving to the energy department, and traded verbal blows with her Remain-backing boss Amber Rudd in one TV referendum debate.
Married with two sons and one daughter, she has picked up some big name Tory backers, including Boris Johnson.
Stephen Crabb, 43
The Work and Pensions Secretary has had a swift rise, and is pitching himself as the ‘blue collar’ candidate in the contest.
Born in Inverness and brought up on a council estate in Haverfordwest in Wales, he was raised by a single mother, studied at Bristol University, gaining a first-class degree in politics and joining the Conservative Party after graduating.
Elected to parliament in 2005 he was a minister in the Wales Office, before becoming secretary of state in July 2014, and took over from Iain Duncan Smith’s role at the DWP this March.
He backed Remain in the referendum, and is running on a joint ticket with Business Secretary Sajid Javid, who would be his Chancellor if he got the keys to Number 10, but is seen as an outsider in the race.
Married to a French wife they have two children, and as a keen rugby player, he still turns out for the Commons and Lords team.
Liam Fox, 54
Currently a backbencher, the Scottish MP was Defence Secretary in the coalition but was forced to resign over his friend Adam Werritty’s role as his adviser.
Born in Inverness, he studied at Glasgow University before working as a GP in Somerset and Buckinghamshire and as a civilian army medical officer.
He became the MP for Woodspring, now North Somerset, in 1992, and unsuccessfully ran for leader the last time the Tories had a contest in 2005 – losing out to David Cameron.
A key figure on the right of the party, he is seen as ‘a proper Eurosceptic’ who wants strict immigration controls, saying if we had to lose membership of the single market in exchange for freedom of movement it would be a price worth paying.
He is in last place with the bookmakers and has the fewest endorsements by fellow Tory MPs, and is expected to be knocked out in the first round.