Elect the Conservative Party Chairman

 

The following was an article written by Henry Hill on the conservativehome web site 11th July 2024.

During each of the leadership contests the Conservative Party has laid on with increasing frequency in recent years, there have been mutterings about cutting the membership out of the process.

One prominent champion of this idea has been William Hague, who first introduced the members’ vote in 1998. In a 2022 column for the Times he wrote that:

“Many activists will not like the idea of losing their vote, and a previous attempt at that failed to obtain the necessary supermajority under the party constitution. Ultimately, however, they subscribe to a party because they want it to succeed and be part of a healthy democracy. That does now require returning the choice of a party leader to the MPs.”

The use of the word ‘returning’ is interesting, because he makes no mention of unwinding any of the other changes made at that time. As John Strafford argued on this site shortly after Hague’s piece, the vote on the leadership was offered to balance a wider curtailing of the members’ role in the Party. He wrote:

“At that time the organisations campaigning for democracy in the Conservative Party, including the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, wanted a Party Chairman elected by all the members of the Party on the basis of One Member One Vote, and for the Party Board to have a majority of voluntary Party members.

“CCHQ refused to agree to this because they wanted central control of the Party, so they gave the members a sop by saying they could have a vote in the Leader’s election; the member’s mistake was to accept this sop.”

So far, those Tory MPs who’ve spoken up on this subject have stressed their support for the members’ vote – as well they might, with an eye on the leadership contest.

We thought we would test the proposition properly. Our post-election survey asked not just whether members support a democratic role in the Party, but what sort of role, and tested both the leadership vote and several of the other options Strafford and others have advocated.

Unsurprisingly, almost seven in ten of those surveyed supported retaining their final say on the leader. Almost as popular – and again unsurprisingly, given the fury in many quarters about how CCHQ has handled candidates and selections in recent contests – was restoring to associations the free hand they used to have in selecting their candidate.

A majority also support electing the Party Chairman. This is a major prize for advocates of the more old-school democratic structures of the Party.

But given the narrowness of the result, one must wonder whether it might have been the recent memory of Richard Holden’s chicken run that pushed this over the top; the idea of returning Conference to the voluntary party, with floor speeches and motions, was supported by less than a quarter of members.