Boris Johnson and other Tory leadership candidates have been warned by a senior Michael Gove ally that being prime minister is “not a game” because it entails life and death decisions.

In what may be seen as a swipe at the former foreign secretary, ex-military officer Tom Tugendhat said he regularly had to present the PM of the day with situations like a hostage crisis and get a near-instant decision on whether to risk lives for a rescue, for example.

He told HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast he was backing Gove as someone who could “actually make those decisions” and who is “ready to lead”.

Gove infamously sunk Johnson’s chances of running for the leadership in 2016 by defecting from his campaign, his allies briefing that the ex-London mayor was not fit to be PM.

Commenting on this year’s leadership race, Tugendhat told Commons People: “I remember when I was in my last job in the military, I was military assistant to the chief of defence staff.

“And a number of times we’d go over to Number 10 with a brief and it was an urgent decision as to whether or not to launch a helicopter with 12 men in it to go and rescue a hostage.

“If you make the wrong call there you may not only be leading to the death of a single hostage, you may be killing all those 12 men and the two pilots because you’re not over the detail.

“This is not a game, this is really not a game when you take over in Number 10. There is nobody, literally nobody, to second guess you. The decision stops with you.

“There isn’t an appeals process, there isn’t a further decision.

“That’s why I’m going for someone who I think is a leader and can actually make those decisions.”

Asked whether he was aiming his comments at Johnson, Tugendhat said: “I’m choosing somebody who’s ready to lead and that’s why I’m choosing Michael Gove.”

Tugendhat also called for early public hustings, to tease out whether “amazing communicators” like Johnson can withstand the pressure of explaining an argument.

The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chair said the party must avoid the mistake it made when Theresa May was elected leader and prime minister without a proper challenge after all other candidates dropped out of the race.

So far the two hustings hosted by the One Nation group of Tories have been behind-closed-doors, and those planned by the backbench 1922 Committee will also be held away from the public gaze next week.

“There is a place for private hustings but I don’t think that is a replacement to say, oh well we can only have a debate of the last two,” Tugendhat said.

“I think when we’re down to, whatever it is, the last four, five, six, something like that, I think we should have a public debate.”

Tugendhat said he thought Gove had a record of delivery as a minister and the boss of the Vote Leave campaign but said even he needs to be tested.

The MP went on: “There are a lot of other candidates who are standing who we think are amazing communicators because they have been communicators, their names are very known or whatever.

“And we need to see whether they can actually explain an idea and sell it, because that is politics.”