FORMER Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has been knocked out of the Tory Party leadership contest after failing to win over enough of his MP colleagues.

The arch-Eurosceptic, who had threatened to send MPs on holiday so he could force through a no-deal Brexit, won just 30 MPs, three short of the number required to go through to the next round.

His defeat will almost certainly benefit front-runner Boris Johnson with most of the MPs who backed Raab expected to now back the former foreign secretary.

Johnson once again dominated the ballot, winning the support of 126 MPs, 12 more than he took in the first round last Thursday.

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But there was a suspicion that he may have “lent” some of his supporters to other candidates in a bid to knock Raab out.

After last Thursday’s ballot, the votes of 50 MPs were up for grabs. Johnson had been expected to win over far more than the dozen he did.

Jeremy Hunt remained in second place with 46 votes, up just three, while Michael Gove won over four more MPs, taking him to 41.

But the candidate with the most momentum was Rory Stewart who won the support of 37 MPs, an incredible 18 more than last week.

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That put him in fourth place, above Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who only scraped past the contest’s threshold, winning 33 votes, 10 more than last week.

Stewart, whose family home is Broich House, near Crieff, began the contest as a rank outsider, but has steadily rose to become a thorn in the side, if not yet a threat, to Johnson’s leadership ambitions.

Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Stewart, who like Johnson is an old Etonian, had been an MI6 officer.

The Tory has previously refused to answer when asked if he’d ever spied for the Secret Intelligence Service.

A Whitehall security source told that paper that Stewart had been recruited after he left Oxford and spent at least seven years as a spy before entering Parliament.

Stewart, who also worked as a private tutor to Prince William and Prince Harry, was hired by the Secret Intelligence Service as a “fast track” entry.

Stewart’s father Brian was second-in-command of MI6 as its assistant chief from 1974 to 1979.

Asked last week whether he had been a spy, he said he had not, but that: “It’s the Secret Intelligence Service, bound by the Official Secrets Act. So even if you found someone who was an intelligence officer, they wouldn’t tell you they were an intelligence officer.”

Asked by the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if former spies could, under the law, answer honestly whether they worked for MI6, he said: “No, and in fact the law wouldn’t allow newspapers to reveal the identity of intelligence officers..”

He added: “I definitely would say I served my country and if somebody asked me whether I am a spy I would say no.”

He later suggested the story was evidence “that maybe somebody was getting a bit rattled”.

There will be a further ballot of MPs today at 3pm. The votes could continue tomorrow, and will go on until there are only two candidates left. The final decision will be taken by the 124,000 Tory Party members.