The race to lead Britain’s vanquished Conservative Party took a dramatic turn on Wednesday when it narrowed to a clash between two right-wing candidates, a twist that provoked audible gasps of surprise when the result was announced. The choice of two candidates from the right was unexpected, defying the pattern set by the previous round of voting. It set off a whirlwind of theories about how Tory lawmakers, renowned for their Machiavellian instincts, managed to produce an outcome that almost none of them had predicted. James Cleverly, a centrist former minister who was buoyed by a well-received performance at the party’s recent conference, had surged to the front of the field in Tuesday’s voting. But Mr. Cleverly, whose pitch to his party was that it should be “more normal,” was unexpectedly eliminated on Wednesday.
