A leading article in this morning's Times recommends that all party members get a voice in the Tory leadership election. It recommends an electoral college where MPs and party activists both get 50% of the vote. This is similar to that recommended by yesterday's Telegraph.
Writing in this morning's Telegraph Iain Duncan Smith also questions the wisdom of an MPs'-only final ballot:
"In the days when the party had MPs in every corner of the country, it might have been reasonable to argue that they should elect their leader. It is questionable whether that argument is as appropriate today. Our seats are overwhelmingly in the shires and suburbs of England. If Conservative MPs have the final say, Scotland will have one vote in the election. Wales will have three. England will have 97 per cent of the electorate. Even more importantly, none of the electors will represent Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham. Furthermore, constituencies we must win at the next election will have no voice."
It is true that the new leadership selection rules have not been agreed but the signs are not encouraging. The current proposal is for an ingrown unrepresentative cabal of MPs and leading party worthies to do the picking and for the great unwashed who pay their dues and put in hours of unpaid canvassing and leafleting to be disenfranchised in toto. Ageing white, male public school-educated grandees such as Lord Heseltine have patronisingly dismissed such people as below the salt. It appears that they lack the wisdom and insight that flow from living in faux-Baroque splendour in North Oxfordshire.
Creating an election process worthy of the era before the Great Reform Act may be true to Tory principles (of the kind which were popular in the 1820's) but provides Labour and the Lib Dems with an easy target. You can almost hear Gordon Brown saying: the Tories - a party for the few, not the many, ....just like the Bourbons.
Posted by: Michael McGowan | 24 May 2005 at 14:15
I wonder what polices the Conservative party could introduce to reflect its new "commitment" to democracy?
Perhaps it could take the right to call strikes away from rank-and-file union members and return it to the union barons. Of course they wouldn't do that, because they don't trust that particular elite.
So what makes *this* elite more trustworthy? Today on the radio, I've heard Stephen Dorrell pontificating about how a leader can only command the respect of MPs if they choose him. This is a little hard to accept, as they chose Major and Hague - both of whom had a rough ride.
It also has an obvious corollary: why should a leader be able to command the respect of the membership, if he is forced upon them?
I think it's time our MPs grew up and realised that they are the ones who destabilised leadership after leadership - no matter how the leader was selected. This tends to indicate that their judgment in this matter is suspect at best.
Posted by: James Hellyer | 24 May 2005 at 20:30