Last Word: Should Party Members Choose their Leaders?
| Author | Paul Webb |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058221127477 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
44POLITICAL INSIGHT•SEPTEMBER 2022
Last Word
For the second time in three years,
Britain’s new prime minister is being
chosen by the Conservative Party
membership. Leadership selection
by party members has become the norm
across the main British parties – but is this a
constitutionally wise state of aairs?
The essence of any parliamentary system
such as the UK’s is that the executive must
enjoy the condence of Parliament. In eect,
this means that any prime minister must have
the backing of his or her own parliamentary
colleagues – as both Boris Johnson and Theresa
May discovered when their support drained
away. Underpinning this political reality is an
indirect chain of accountability from executive
to MPs, who in turn are accountable to voters.
There is no such chain of accountability
from executive to party members under a
parliamentary constitution, so one might
reasonably ask why the members should have
the decisive say on who is to lead the party in
Parliament.
Nevertheless, there have signicant moves
in recent years to allow party members an ever
greater say in choosing leaders. For the Tories,
this embrace of members emerged in reaction
to grassroots anger at the crushing election
defeat of 1997. Under Ed Miliband, Labour
seized on a row about candidate-selection
in Falkirk to take the opportunity of diluting
the role of trade unions and radical activists in
leadership elections. (These changes did not
have the intended eect, as the election of
Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader attested.)
These changes have often been introduced
in the name of enhancing parties’ internal
democracy. To most observers, a more inclusive
selectorate constitutes a more democratic
selectorate. But as historian Robert Saunders
has pointed out ‘in the name of “internal
democracy”, our parties have done something
profoundly undemocratic. They have handed
over decisions that are fundamental to the
way we are governed to a group that is not
responsible to the wider public.’
There are several dangers in giving so
much power to party members. One is that
a small group of people, which is plainly
unrepresentative of the wider electorate,
gets to select a new prime minister, with
potentially very signicant policy implications.
Compared to the electorate as a whole, the
Tory membership is older, whiter, more male,
more auent, more economically right-wing,
more socially conservative and more pro-
Brexit. Member involvement in leadership
selection contests can also run the risk of
generating conict between the parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary wings of parties:
as Labour discovered when Corbyn was
resoundingly defeated in a condence vote by
his parliamentary colleagues in 2016, only to be
comfortably re-elected as leader by the extra-
parliamentary membership.
So, what alternatives are there? Assuming
that none of the parties would wish to entirely
remove the right of members to vote now, four
possibilities can be identied. The rst would be
for governing parties that change leaders – and
therefore prime ministers – between elections,
do so by a process of an open primary in which
all voters could participate. This would ensure
that a new prime minister would have to cast
his or her appeal wider than the party’s core
support, and would have a direct democratic
mandate. However, directly elected prime
ministers in parliamentary systems have been
Should Party
Members Choose
their Leaders?
As Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss battle for the hearts – and the votes – of
Conservative Party members, Paul Webb argues that the time has
come to give party membership less say in choosing their leaders.
tried and quickly found wanting in other
contexts, with Israel oering a cautionary
example. Also, such a system would actually
do nothing to ensure that a new leader had
the express support of his or her parliamentary
party.
A second option would be to introduce
a new constitutional convention that any
new prime minister chosen between general
elections by the membership should call an
immediate general election. In eect, this would
end the (relatively common) situation in which
prime ministers are changed between elections.
But one could easily imagine that governing
parties might be called upon to request a
dissolution of Parliament under circumstances
less than amenable to them, so it is doubtful
that this would nd much favour. It is notable
that all the leadership candidates in the
Conservatives’ contest this summer rejected any
possibility of calling a new general election in
the event of their winning the leadership.
A third alternative would be for any new
prime minister chosen by party members to
be ratied by a vote of their parliamentary
party. However, this once again holds out
the prospect of political tension between
parliamentary and extra-parliamentary wings.
A nal possibility is for parties to have more
than one ‘leader’. One option would be for
a parliamentary leader chosen exclusively
by MPs and an extra-parliamentary leader
chosen by the wider membership. The Liberal
Democrats have a party president elected
by the membership as well as an overall
leader (also chosen by the members.) A closer
parallel might be provided by the SNP which
has a membership-elected leader – currently
Nicola Sturgeon – but a separate Westminster
group leader, Ian Blackford, selected by his
parliamentary colleagues.
It is hard to imagine any party reverting to
a position in which members are denied a
decisive voice in leadership contests. But as
the Tory leadership vote shows, perhaps the
time has come to look at other ways of giving
members a say.
Suggested reading:
McKenzie, R.T. (1982) ‘Power in the Labour Party: The
issue of intra-party democracy’ in D. Kavanagh (ed)
The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Routledge),
pp.191-201.
Saunders, R. (2022) ‘Why members should never be
allowed to prime ministers’, New Statesman 20 June.
Paul Webb is Professor of Politics at the
University of Sussex.
Political Insight September 2022 BU.indd 44Political Insight September 2022 BU.indd 4409/08/2022 12:5909/08/2022 12:59
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