Since first becoming Chairman of the 1922 Committee in 2010, Graham Brady has overseen the election of three Conservative leaders – Theresa May, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak – as well as votes of confidence in both May and Boris Johnson. Serving as the voice of the Tory backbenches to the party leadership, Brady’s views on the leadership carry more weight than those of most Conservatives.
Brady said it was a ‘mistake’ for party members to have the ‘final vote’
As such, Tory members might be a little irritated to hear that Brady thinks it is ‘crazy’ that they can vote on a Conservative prime minister’s successor if they are elected in government. He told Durham students last week that it was a ‘mistake…in a parliamentary system’ for party members to have the ‘final vote’ on a new leader whilst the party is in power. He thinks they should be stripped of the right.
The Tories should go further. Having been a Tory member since 2015, I have enjoyed the opportunity to vote for a new prime minister on two occasions. I can currently look forward to electing the next Leader of the Opposition, if the opinion polls are to be believed. But recent experiences have brought me to believe my fellow members and I should lose our vote altogether: in opposition, as well as in government.
Under current Conservative rules, leadership elections have two parts. Once a leader resigns or is forced out by a confidence vote – as Iain Duncan Smith was in 2003 – MPs vote to whittle down those candidates standing to a final two which are then put to the party membership. This produces a natural tension if more MPs prefer one candidate while a majority of members prefer another.
Both David Cameron and Boris Johnson were the first choices of MPs and members; both Iain Duncan Smith and Liz Truss carried the support of less than a third of the Tory parliamentary party but were backed by party members. For both, this led to an unstable situation which eventually resulted in the leader being forced out – in Truss’s case, in government, in record time, and in spectacular fashion.
The current leadership rules were introduced by William Hague in 1998 in an attempt to broaden participation in the party following the previous year’s landslide defeat. But the chaos of Truss’s 49 days and a potential membership-backed return for Johnson – only months after having been forced out by MPs – has convinced the former leader that his own leadership rules have been found wanting.
If both the person charged with implementing the rules and the person who introduced them feel they should be changed, there might be a case for examining reform. But Brady has pointed out a snag. Changing the rules would involve changing the party constitution, requiring a super majority from party members. ConservativeHome polling suggests they are strongly in favour of the status quo.
This is hardly surprising. As control over candidate selections, the allocation of funds, and the running of party conferences has become ever-more-centralised by CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters), members have clung to their leadership vote as their one major opportunity to exercise influence over their party’s direction. Many distrust MPs, who they see as having forced out two prime ministers that they had voted for.
But MPs and members have different priorities. Although the party zealously guards membership figures, they are known to be under 200,000 in number. Members are predominantly male, white, elderly, and concentrated in southern England. For the very fact that they are members of a political party, they are naturally more ideological and politically engaged than voters as a whole.
This has many benefits. After all, Conservative members are the lifeblood of the party, the activists who go out and door knock in the rain to get Tory candidate elected. But in selecting a party leader, their tendency has been towards selecting a candidate of the party’s right, even if polls suggest they are less likely to win an election. Duncan Smith and Truss are inauspicious cases in point.
By contrast, since they are accountable to the electorate, the focus of MPs is on selecting a leader most likely to win the party a general election. Ideological purity matters less to MPs than keeping their seats. When in government, the candidate with the support of the most MPs is also the one most likely to be able to command the confidence in the House of Commons – their primary duty.
Had it not been for Tory backbenchers preferring her, we might never have had Margaret Thatcher
With a leadership contest likely after the general election – and not entirely impossible before it – any attempt to change the party’s leadership rules cannot come soon enough. When Michael Howard attempted to change them in 2005, he was defeated by members. ConservativeHome has suggested overcoming this by offering more control over the party board and candidate selection.
Admittedly, Tory members have so far shown little interest in our grand bargain. But without some form of reform, MPs could increasingly take matters into their own hands. In replacing Truss, the 1922 Committee hiked the threshold for MP nominations to 100, to ensure as few candidates could stand as possible. In the end, only Sunak reached that total, and was elected unopposed.
One suspects MPs preferred this approach to the rigmarole of a members’ vote. I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar pushes for a coronation in future. Doing so would rob the party of any form of contest. This might make sense under the strains of government. But in opposition the party will need an honest post-mortem about the trials and tribulations of 14 years in power.
Tory members who fear this means selling out their vote to unprincipled MPs needn’t be too worried. In 1975, soundings of Conservative associations suggested they wanted to keep Edward Heath. Had it not been for Tory backbenchers preferring her, we might never have had Margaret Thatcher. For all their faults, Conservative MPs are not without some taste. They should be trusted to elect their own leader.
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