Sarah Gall is a political data scientist and membership secretary for the UK’s Conservative Friends of Australia. She previously headed up political and policy research for the Prime Minister of Australia.
For any Australian, the most recent events in British politics – and the months leading up to it – brought back torrid memories of the past decade.
Over that time, “leadership spills” (the colloquial term for opening up the party leadership to contest) became a national sport and solidified Canberra’s reputation for being the coup capital of the democratic world.
Similarities can be drawn between Boris Johnson and his Australian counterparts, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott; all leaders had won a large majority in the lower house and, within the same term in government, suffered significant blows to their popularity amongst voters and their own colleagues.
Before the end of their first terms, the two Australian prime ministers were ousted; Rudd by his deputy, Julia Gillard, and Abbott by Malcolm Turnbull.
For Rudd, just months before the 2010 federal election was due, Australian Labor Party (ALP) powerbrokers visited Gillard to say that she had enough support to challenge the prime minister and win. Within 24 hours, Gillard was elected leader unopposed, becoming Australia’s first female prime minister. Rudd did not contest the ballot.
This leadership spill was conducted quickly and ruthlessly. Behind the scenes, the numbers had been done and had been firmed up amongst factions within the ALP’s caucus for months until Gillard was ready to pull the trigger.
In contrast to this swift knifing, the seven leadership spills that followed in as many years were drawn out, painful affairs, featuring pervasive internecine conflict.
The latter style of leadership spill was akin to the ousting of Johnson. They followed a general pattern of firstly holding a failed vote to remove the prime minister, followed by months of media speculation about the party’s leadership and mounting internal pressure against the leader.
Finally, momentum was built over a final week as cabinet ministers resigned en masse, rendering the prime minister’s position untenable. This occurred just before delivering the final, and fatal, vote against them.
Despite Gillard’s approach being described as a “bloodless coup”, all leadership spills in Australia have been damaging to the party, albeit some more than others. And ultimately, after a decade of chaos, voters had become unforgiving, and their confidence in the parties to govern had diminished.
This prompted both the ALP and conservative-aligned Liberal Party to change the rules that allow a sitting prime minister to be ousted. The ALP now requires 75 percent of the party’s MPs and senators to agree to bring forward a spill motion to remove their leader.
The Liberal Party also announced that if a leader goes to an election and wins, then they will remain as prime minister for the full parliamentary term. A safeguard mechanism could be triggered however, whereby a supermajority of two-thirds of Liberal MPs and senators are required to vote to trigger a spill motion.
In contrast, the Conservative Party in the UK has a much lower threshold of just 15 percent of MPs needed to trigger a vote of no confidence, and a simple majority of 50 percent to remove the prime minister.
Like Australia, the low threshold to bring on a vote has not served British politics well. Failed initial no confidence votes to remove Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May, and now Johnson left all four bruised and on shaky ground before they either resigned or suffered a brutal election defeat.
As history has shown us in both the UK and Australia, even if a prime minister is unsuccessfully challenged, their days are numbered one way or another. Their fate is therefore determined by a minority.
This begs the question as to why the threshold in which a no confidence vote can be triggered has not been raised to at least 50 per cent; the number required to remove the leader.
Changing these rules would ensure, in cases where the leader has lost the confidence of the party, that MPs are certain they have the numbers to successfully remove a prime minister before it goes to a vote.
It may also ensure that an alternative candidate can be canvassed amongst Conservative parliamentary members privately so that they can determine whether there really is a better alternative.
The current protracted and public process sees the airing of the Tories’ own dirty laundry. This really only benefits the Labour Party, who effectively are served up their opposition research on a silver platter.
What will be interesting to see is how the voters will respond at the next general election. In Australia, voters punished the respective parties severely following the ousting of leaders who had large mandates. Will the Conservative Party meet the same fate?