Spectator: How to end the Tory leadership chaos cycle
In the eight years since David Cameron resigned as prime minister, the Conservatives have had four different leaders. Soon it will be five. Between Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, recent stints at the top of the party have averaged just two years. Being the leader of the Conservative Party – a role for which six candidates are currently vying – has become an almost impossible job.
Intractable policy challenges, especially Britain’s relationship with the European Union which felled both Cameron and May, go some way towards explaining the tumult. So does the poor quality of some leaders, none more so than forty-nine day premier Truss. But another factor, much less discussed, is the party’s mechanism for ditching its leaders: the confidence vote.
Since 1998, and as we’ve all come to know only too well, letters from just 15 per cent of MPs – less than one in six – have been sufficient to bring about a confidence vote. The leader’s fate is then decided by an up-or-down secret ballot. Win it, and they stay on and are supposedly immune from challenge for the next year. Lose it, and they’re out.
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