On the face of it, ranked votes seem preferable to meetings of MPs in the smoke-filled rooms of Westminster tradition. Until 1981 and 1998, respectively, the Labor and Conservative leaders were elected by their MPs. Before 1965, Tory leaders simply “emerged” from discussions between party dignitaries. Party-wide leadership polls are said to foster internal democracy and entice members. Parties in parliamentary democracies such as Canada and Australia have also introduced them, although in some cases the votes of MPs and members are weighted 50-50. The UK Labor Party’s move to an all-one-member-one-vote system in 2014 was seen as taking away the disproportionate power of unions under its previous electoral college model. But serious flaws have emerged in the UK. As in 2019, it will be almost two months this year between the resignation of a Tory prime minister and the naming of the next — far longer than the 25 working days expected for a general election. But Tory MPs on both occasions took less than two weeks to whittle down a dozen or so hopefuls to two candidates for membership. Candidates must then spend weeks trying to reach a narrow and deeply unrepresentative slice of the electorate. A 2020 study found that Tory members are older (39 per cent are over 65), wealthier, more male, more southern and far more predominantly white than the general population. The longer the campaign drags on, the more the leadership candidates are drawn into populist pitches aimed at this small electorate. Liz Truss has doubled down on her promised tax cuts since the MP vote stage. Rishi Sunak, who initially presented himself as the voice of economic reason, has become more reckless as he found the “doomster” messages backfired. In a sign of the extent to which he has been drawn into playing to the base, Sunak suggested expanding the definition of “extremism” to include people who “insult Britain”. Similar objections would apply whichever party was in power and whoever the candidates were. A long shutdown in government is damaging. Apart from the rebound in Labor numbers before the 2015 poll that elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, moreover, party-wide votes have actually done little to reverse the party’s decades-long decline in membership. And the 2015 Labor vote produced a leader who struggled to command a majority among his own MPs. Opposition parties may be allowed to use a party-wide vote to choose a leader, who will then face the wider electorate. For a party in government, whose program has been approved in a general election, the position of replacing a mid-term leader should be returned to MPs. Party members could have a say in demanding that MPs consult local unions. But in Britain’s parliamentary democracy, MPs are elected by voters to make decisions on behalf of voters. It is logical and consistent for them to decide who will lead them — allowing the government to quickly return to managing the crises of the day.
