The Conservative party’s electoral system won an unlikely compliment this afternoon from Labour MP Ian Austin, who declared that it showed how a ‘serious party’ operated. It might look serious compared with the fiasco of Labour’s leadership crisis, but does the election of a new Prime Minister really have to be dragged out over two months, and at a time when the country is crying out for someone to take leadership over Brexit?
It is bizarre that 100,000 Conservative party members are deemed to require twice as long to make up their minds as 46 million UK voters have to decide in a general election campaign. Until 2001 the Conservative party leadership was decided on fairly quickly via a ballot exclusively of MPs. For that year’s election the franchise was extended to all Conservative party members. There is something to be said for that – even if it installed Iain Duncan Smith as leader. But too little thought was given to the situation in which the party now finds itself – with a Conservative leader resigning while Prime Minister. In opposition, no-one much cares if Conservative party associations spend two months grilling candidates on the rubber chicken circuit. But when markets are in panic it is rather a different matter.
Why can’t Tory members decide on their new leader in a week, via a couple of hustings live-streamed over the internet? Such is the need for the leadership to decide quickly that ordinary Conservative party members are likely to lose the franchise they won 15 years ago. With an emphatic win for Theresa May in the first ballot, there will be such pressure on the other candidates to withdraw from the contest after the two ballots this week that we are likely to have a new Prime Minister without ordinary members having a say. That would have been unnecessary had the current situation been foreseen.
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