The next Conservative leader will struggle to keep the job.
I say that, not as a comment on the next leader, but as a comment on our absurd leadership rules. To win, a candidate need only come second in the MPs’ ballot. But to remain in office, he or she needs more than half of MPs’ votes. We are the only party in the democratic world that, instead of building in some incumbency protection, makes it harder to hold the job than to win it in the first place.
Yes, it’s time for my regular ConHome column about the madness of our leadership rules. Long-standing readers will know that, whenever a leadership election looms, I argue on this site that, once it is over, we need to look again at our bizarre system – a system whose own author, William Hague, now wants scrapped.
We can’t keep putting this off. For one thing, the rules are needlessly polarising. Like our divorce laws, they seem almost designed to ensure that, even when two people begin with every intention of behaving amicably, they end up knocking lumps out of each other.
Much of the hostility to Rishi Sunak was a consequence of his 2022 run-off against Liz Truss. The binary nature of these contests meant that Sunak came to be portrayed as the wet candidate – despite having voted to leave the EU. That cartoonish version of him lingered and, if my canvassing experiences were anything to go by, accounted for a chunk of the Reform vote.
For another, it never seemed to occur to the authors of these rules that they might apply while our party was in office. From July to September 2022, despite the Ukraine war and the energy crisis, government was effectively paused while the Tories had a grumpy internal argument. Voters were unimpressed, and Labour was gifted a line that it has used ever since to the effect that we were “governing in the interests of the Conservative Party, not the country”.
But the biggest problem is that you can win the post with the support of 30 per cent of the parliamentary party, but can’t hold it without the support of at least 50 per cent. That is an unstable position for any party leader.
The flaw became obvious the very first time the system was used. In 2001, the last parliamentary round left Ken Clarke with 59 votes, Iain Duncan Smith with 54 and Michael Portillo with 53. Clarke and Duncan Smith went forward to the ballot of party members, and IDS won comfortably. However, to stay on as leader, he needed the support of half the parliamentary party – 83 MPs. Two years later, he was challenged and, despite increasing his support from 54 to 75, he was ousted.
That should have been a signal that changes needed to be made. But, somehow, the time was never quite right. In the run-up to contests, changing the rules was seen as loading the dice in favour of a particular candidate. Once they were over, everyone lost interest.
So the flaw was left unaddressed. But the election of 2022 highlighted it again, even more vividly. Rishi Sunak won 137 MPs’ votes, Liz Truss 113 and Penny Mordaunt 105. Truss went on to win with the members, but only 31.8 per cent of MPs had voted for her, and several of them were waiting for the first opportunity to reverse the members’ decision.
That problem is about to become more acute. Under the rules, 15 per cent of MPs can trigger a leadership contest by writing to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee. With 121 Tories in Parliament, that means that just 18 letters are needed. Unless the leader then secures the votes of 61 or more MPs, he or she will be banned from fighting on. Can everyone not see what is wrong with this?
Let me say it one more time. We can’t change the rules in the run-up to a leadership contest. But we need to change them afterward. The new leader should appoint a committee, bringing together figures from the 1922 and the Party Board, perhaps chaired by a former leader, to devise a better system. To forestall any temptation to game things in favour of a particular candidate, any changes should come into force only with a delay – say, from 2030. That will allow the authors to focus disinterestedly on finding the best system.
How much more evidence do we need? What the devil are we waiting for?