Conservative members have a constitutional responsibility when choosing Truss’s successor  

Once again, the Conservative party is choosing its new leader. Which means that, once again, the Conservative party is choosing a new prime minister for the country. The two-month long leadership contest over the summer – which lasted longer than Truss’s subsequent premiership – saw the party talking to itself and ignoring the reality of what the new prime minister would have to deal with. They must not make the same mistakes again. 

The new process means Conservative members are again taking a decision on behalf of the country  

Under the Conservative party constitution, party members must have a say on the leader – if more than one candidate makes it through the nomination stages in parliament. This time around the process is being expedited so a leader will be in place within a week, but it is still expected to come down to a vote of the membership.  

Whoever wins that vote will face an even more difficult situation than Truss. Since she entered Downing Street and signed off on Kwasi Kwarteng’s so-called mini budget, government borrowing costs have grown, inflation has continued to rise and the new chancellor has been frank about the need to make ‘difficult decisions’ about cuts to departmental budgets. Whether or not the planned medium-term fiscal plan is announced on 31 October, the new prime minister will have to deal immediately with the challenges facing the country. After Truss’s time in office, one key test for her successor will be the judgement of the markets on whether their economic plans are credible.  

Of course, they have to get through the leadership contest first. The summer election was a bad-tempered affair, with rival candidates attacking each other’s records and promises in television studios and at hustings. It is hardly surprising that the bad blood did not vanish once the campaign was over, and the autumn re-run, while compressed, may cause similar problems. Holding an election in just a week, with only one public debate, may reduce the time for blue-on-blue attacks and off record briefings, but it will still create winners and, potentially bad, losers. 

In this context, the membership must choose someone who can bring MPs together and get things done in government. Truss was undone in part because she relied heavily on her supporters and did not try to build bridges across the party, banishing most of Rishi Sunak’s allies to the backbenches. The new leader must command more than a minority or even a simple majority of MPs – they have to be able to govern with authority and from a fully functioning No10. This also means that losing candidates – and their allies – must sign up to the new government and accept the authority of the next prime minister. As the Institute has pointed out elsewhere, the chaos surrounding Truss’s leadership meant that the government was distracted from the important issues facing the country. This cannot be allowed to continue.   

If members cannot choose a competent leader, they should not have this responsibility again 

Party membership is a social good – it means that people participate in politics and ideas are widely debated. But Conservative party members are generally more right-wing than their MPs, and than the general public, just as Labour members are generally more left wing than their MPs and the public. ^[1] When the membership form the selectorate for a party leader and prime minister, candidates focus on their views, and not the priorities of the wider country, to get their votes. 

Truss did just that and her project failed resoundingly. If the members choose someone else who satisfies their particular politics but cannot deliver stable, functioning government, then the Conservative party will have failed the constitutional test it has now been set.  

_______________

1. Bale T, Mind the values gap, UK in a Changing Europe, June 2020