Party System: The rules of Conservative Party leadership elections are crucial to the result

Despite possible appearances, there is not actually an election occurring for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and hence the additional position of Prime Minister, at this time. That may not be obvious, after not one but at least two newspaper articles by Boris Johnson in the past 10 days assailing the Prime Minister and her Chequers Plan, and the intense media interest in the latest twists and turns of the former Foreign Secretary’s eternally idiosyncratic private life, which now appear to involve a new ‘friend’ who might end up as Mrs BoJo 3.
Intriguing as this all might be (unless you are Mrs BoJo 2, who might not consider ‘intriguing’ to be the optimal word), both the various blasts from newspaper columns by him and the efforts of Fleet Street’s hit squads to tell us far more than we could possibly want to know about the process by which Boris hit it off (as it were) with Carrie, it matters relatively little in the more mundane question of the future leadership of the Conservative Party. The critical element, and which is worth setting out in full, are the actual rules for the Conservative Party’s leadership ballot.
The discussion here is an interesting one (honest) not least because the Conservative Party has not historically been that wild about rules. This is a not unreasonable instinct. In Victorian Britain, it was the Liberal Party under William Gladstone (especially) who were dead keen not only on rules but on writing them down so that everyone knew what they were, an approach that Conservatives such as Benjamin Disraeli regarded as utterly demented in that they denied the country - and far, far more relevantly the government of the day - the flexibility to do whatever appeared to be sensible (or just expedient) and not be hamstrung by a set of abstract and inconvenient regulations. It is this spirit which explains why the United Kingdom is one of precisely two countries in the world (the other is Saudi Arabia) that does not have a single formal written constitution (although this would be denied by some in Saudi Arabia who assert that they do have a written constitution, it being the Koran).
As a consequence, the Conservative Party had no leadership election rules of any kind until 1965. Their leaders ‘emerged’ after ‘soundings’ were taken in a somewhat mysterious manner. There was no vote of any form. The credibility of this method broke down after Lord Home was in 1963 preferred to the more obvious front-runner Rab Butler (who at least had the virtue of being an MP as well as having held multiple senior offices of state), which prompted two leading figures to quit the Cabinet (Iain McLeod and Enoch Powell), the former of whom denounced the whole procedure as a “magic circle”.
From 1965 to 1997, the Conservative Party leader was elected in a ballot of MPs, which was the method by which Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and William Hague took the helm of the party. Following his victory, nonetheless, Mr Hague felt obliged to look for a more inclusive and democratic system of deciding who might be the Conservative Party leader. The result of this was a carefully crafted compromise strongly influenced by a model put forward in a column in The Times on 28 September 1997 (written by, er, me) which remains the basis for the system of how any successor to Theresa May would be chosen.
Yet in the best traditions of the Tories, even though they have rules these days, there are aspects to them that remain extremely ambiguous in their application, and a huge amount of authority is delegated to the Returning Officer (the Chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs) to determine what to do in the conditions which exist (such as in 2016 declaring that Mrs May had been elected after Andrea Leadsom had abandoned the contest rather than inviting the next qualified competitor to take on the then Home Secretary). The Conservative Party thus maintains a fairly semi-detached relationship with rules but the essence of them are very hard to ignore when it comes to the basics of a leadership campaign.
What constitutes a vacancy?
There are only two conditions in which there can be a vacancy. The first is if the incumbent resigns or dies (which is deemed a de facto resignation in the Conservative Party). The second is if he or she loses a motion of confidence. Such a motion requires 15% of the parliamentary party to write to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee to insist on such an instrument (this equates to 48 MPs in this Parliament). The timing of such a vote is in the hands of the Chairman of the 1922 Committee ‘in consultation with the leader’.
This might strike many people as a little odd, as the leader might have firm views as to whether having such a ballot earlier or later were in his or her better interests but never mind. If the incumbent leader wins such a confidence vote (even by one) then they stay and no further challenge can be mounted for another 12 months. If they lose, they are out instantly and cannot seek to run again in the subsequent leadership election. The rules are, though, completely silent, on what would happen if a leader senses a challenge is coming that might succeed and resigns in advance of it but puts their name forward in the contest thereafter (in a variant of what then Prime Minister John Major did in 1995). It is highly unlikely that Mrs May would try such a trick but it is permissible.
In current conditions, especially with the clock ticking on Brexit, the rules are a major disincentive for Mrs May’s opponents attempting to force her out via an official challenge. They are aware that she would very probably win such a ballot and would claim a mandate for her Chequers Plan from MPs as part of that victory. As a consequence, those who want her out are largely convinced that they will have to wait until after the UK has technically left the EU in March 2019 before attempting any such coup and even then it is more likely to succeed via a Cabinet consensus that she should depart (which is not in any section of the rulebook but is the most viable means of pushing a Tory PM out).
What is the first stage?
The first stage is a ballot of Conservative MPs to ascertain who the top two candidates are, who would then be sent on to the ‘mass membership’ for a final decision. The first stage can turn into the last stage. In 2003, only one person, Michael Howard, was nominated so that was that. In 2016, as noted, there were five options at the start which were whittled down to the requisite two (Mrs May and Mrs Leadsom), which was reduced to one when one of the two withdrew meaning that the membership was not consulted on this occasion either. The balance of probability is that this would be unlikely to be repeated this time but as this is the Conservative Party who knows what will occur?
Anyway, the rules for nomination are extremely unchallenging. A proposer and a seconder are all you need. The rules imply that you cannot propose yourself if you only have one other friend, but do not shut that door entirely. It would be up to, you guessed it, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee to adjudicate on that one and if he were your only other friend you might be in luck.
There is then a process of exhaustive ballots in which, assuming there are more than two contenders, votes are held which eliminate those with the lowest number of votes until only two runners are left in it. Alas, as exposed in 2001, no one thought what to do if both of the bottom candidates got the same amount of votes, so if that occurs the ballot has to be run again (indeed theoretically an infinite number of times) simply to decide who was the least popular person so that the process could move to the next round. With a bit of luck, the procedure may work smoothly at the next time of asking.
One further quirk is what would happen if only two candidates were nominated. Should there be an indicative ballot of MPs so members knew where the two stood in terms of their appeal to MPs? The rules are absolutely silent on this. It would be up to (this is becoming repetitive) the COFT1922COM to decide. This makes the personal preference of this figure (Sir Graham Brady as of now) incredibly important. If he were for or against a certain candidate his decision on an indicative ballot may well be seminal.
What about the final stage?
This should be the easy part. Two candidates (presuming one does not instantly blow themselves up politically as in 2016) and a ‘mass’ membership. What can possibly go wrong? A lot as it turns out.
The trouble with the ‘mass’ membership is that it is not much of a mass these days. The official line is that the Conservative Party has about 124,000 members. This is not fantastic. It had almost three times as many in 2001 when Iain Duncan Smith defeated Ken Clarke to become leader. That was a massive fall from the 1950s when the Conservatives had about two million members (and did not offer them any role in leadership contests). The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has more than four times as many members as the Conservatives today (admittedly many of them are bonkers). The SNP, which only contests seats in Scotland, is thought to have a fraction more at 125,000. Even the Liberal Democrats, who only have 12 MPs, have virtually 100,000 members.
Put differently, the ‘mass’ membership of the Conservative Party, which in all likelihood will within a year or so decide whom is the next Prime Minister and what the final line is on the Brexit negotiations, represents a whopping 0.25% of the entire British adult electorate (which is estimated at 48 million).
For further comparison, the Conservative Party has about half the apparent membership of the United Grand Lodge of England (probably some overlap in personnel between the two bodies) and 25,000 fewer adherents than the British Shooting and Conservation Society (ditto the overlap point). On current trends by 2022 it will be overtaken by The Ramblers. Overtaken by ramblers? Damning.
In fact, it is worse still (or better, if you think faintly representative electorates are overrated). The best private estimate is that of those 124,000 ‘mass’ members, at least 5% of them are either dead but still paying the direct debit to party HQ or double-counted. On the perhaps false calculation that the deceased will not vote in the next leadership election and the double-counted (those with two homes and hence two constituency memberships usually) will have the decency not to vote twice, then the ‘real’ membership number who could take part is about 115,000 people. Turnout at the two contested Conservative leadership elections in 2001 and 2005 was 78%. That means that someone could be elected Conservative Party leader and therefore Prime Minister with as little as 48,000 votes or 0.1% of the entire adult electorate. To put this in context, one single Labour MP (Stephen Timms) managed to win almost the same amount of votes (he got 47,124) in a single parliamentary constituency (East Ham) while storming home in the 2017 general election.
There is a really, really serious issue here which the senior ranks of the Conservative Party know and are desperately trying to work out what to do about. The present rules state that anyone who has been a member of the Conservative Party for at least three months from the moment that you-know-who announces that there is an election for the leadership can be part of what is plainly not a ‘mass’ membership. As it stands, the Conservative Party is almost as ripe for entryism as Labour was in 2015 when the Corbynites swooped to conquer. It might seem like a very obscure matter, but in many ways one of the most crucial questions in British politics today is whether the Conservative Party can change its rules (requiring, for instance, a 12 month membership period before the franchise is awarded) before its next leadership election or, and this seems to be a truly long shot, convince a lot more ‘normal’ people to join it very quickly. That in turn might reduce the average age of a party member, which is thought to be 72 years old.
Watch this space very closely. On the rules as they operate might well turn the identity of the new party leader, the next PM and the final Brexit settlement.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA