How to prevent our political system going Liz Truss again
The words “Liz Truss” have taken over from “Pete Tong” or “Tits up” in the popular lexicon. In 20 years’ time people may still be saying: “After my ninth pint it all went a bit Liz Truss”, or “it was when I put the diesel on the barbeque that it really went Liz Truss”.
The points at which the premiership of Liz Truss went belly up have been discussed ad nauseam: mini-budgets, toe-curling press conferences, U-turns, sackings and resignations — she really packed it in. But the real question we should all be asking ourselves is: how the hell did this country let a woman like this get her hands on the top job? To misquote her directly: THAT. IS. A. DISGRACE.
From 7th July, when Boris Johnson eventually resigned, to 5th September, when Truss eventually won the leadership election, the Conservative Party subjected itself to one of the most onerous family rows in political history. The Truss leadership bid should have come to an end when she couldn’t find her way out of the room in which she launched her campaign. At this point she was the least popular candidate, polling at 6 per cent. We were subjected to a marathon leadership contest which included five televised debates, 12 hustings events, fractious arguments and a whole heap of negative headlines. Truss clung on and won over the Tory faithful, while the rest of the country looked on to witness an outcome which was so… well, Liz Truss.
The Conservative leader was once elected by MPs alone. William Hague pushed through a new system for selecting the Tory leader in 1999. Whether this was or was not to do with his position as Leader looking distinctly dodgy is a moot point. Many of his own MPs thought he was not landing a glove on Tony Blair and the Conservatives were heading for a second General Election rout. However, Hague remained popular with grassroots Tory members, so a new two-stage process was created. If an MP wanted to challenge Hague to the leadership, MPs would have to choose two candidates to be put to a postal ballot of individual party members. One of those candidates would almost certainly be Hague and he would win a popular vote of party members at a canter. What the real motivations of Hague were can only be known by him, but this two candidate run-off selection process is pretty much the same one that dramatically failed over the summer of 2022.
Giving the power to elect party leaders and Prime Ministers to a small group of party activists is complete folly. For a start they do not represent the wider electorate and therefore have an agenda which is removed from the concerns of the country at large. Tim Bale, co-author of Footsoldiers: Political Party Membership in the 21st century says of Tory Party members: “Older, well-off, white southerners may be a wee bit of a caricature, but it isn’t so very far from the truth.” 63 per cent of Conservative members are male (49 per cent in wider society), 76 per cent now think we were right to leave the EU (35 per cent in wider society) and about 80 per cent are “ABC1s” (51 per cent in the electorate). This demographic makeup is fine, indeed it is to be commended, if you are trying to sell Jaguars, cruises or golf club memberships, but not so good if you’re trying to select an effective leader for a democratic political party in the UK.
The Labour Party changed the way they elect their leaders under Jeremy Corbyn in 2018. Like Hague, Corbyn’s popularity came from the party’s membership, while many of his MPs were openly hostile toward him. Corbyn rewrote the rules for leadership campaigns so that more power was put into the hands of grassroots support. This wrestled power away from the Parliamentary Party and into the hands of hard Left groups such as Momentum, who had swamped the Labour Party’s membership.
Again, the demographics and priorities of groups such as Momentum are completely different from, in many cases at odds with, the wider electorate. The complete disaster that Corbyn was to the Labour Party is evidence that, as with the Conservatives, putting the choice of leader into the hands of party members is wrong for our political system, for the country and the political party in question.
One way to solve this problem would be to expand party political membership, so they become less fringe and more mainstream. Party membership hit a peak in the early 1950s when there were just under 3 million members of the Conservative Party and 1 million Labour Party members (but nearer 6 million once trades union membership was taken into account). Now, the Labour Party has just under half a million members, with the Tories slipping to under 200,000. The simple fact is that political party membership is not going to expand anytime soon to become more mainstream, and will not solve leadership selection issues in the near to medium term.
We could go back to selecting leaders through the Parliamentary Political Party. The idea that MPs are a demographic representation of the wider public is a nonsense, but they are in their jobs to represent a wider constituency — which is why the majority of MPs are more moderate than the grassroots. MPs are also normally selected by constituency members, so the footsoldiers of a political party retain a level of direct influence — although their choice of candidates will be limited by the party headquarters.
The second alternative is to create a form of primary selection. A fully open primary, where the electorate as a whole is entitled to select the leader of a political party, would not work in the British political system. This is the way many states in America select Presidential candidates, but this would be unworkable in the British Parliamentary system. However, we could introduce a system where a Parliamentary Party puts forward two candidates to a Modified Closed Primary. This would allow unaffiliated voters to request a party’s ballot, on condition of certain terms and conditions. This would open the selection system to the wider electorate. Yes, there would be some troublemakers who vote tactically, but this has not been a huge issue in America, where a system along similar lines has worked in states such as California.
Many of the foundations for a Modified Open Primary are already in place. As seen with this summer’s leadership election, along with the 2020 Labour Party leadership campaign and the 2019 Conservative contest, the media is now geared to run televised debates around leadership races. Parties can handle national hustings, which crisscross the country and could give the wider electorate access to the candidates. Data management systems and new technology give parties the ability to create digital voting systems.
The reality is, however, that one of the reasons why the summer election of Liz Truss was such a disaster was the length of time it took to make the choice. Thank God, for all our sakes, that the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, had the balls to ensure that last week’s Conservative psychodrama did not spill out into another long-running leadership campaign. It should be accepted that a leadership contest, when a party is in power, should be hammered out between MPs, on the broad understanding that candidates will keep to the broad trajectory of the manifesto on which the party came to power. When a party is out of power, and time is not such a factor, the election should take the form of two candidates selected by MPs going into Modified Closed Primaries.
The British political system cannot continue to appoint leaders in such a dysfunctional way. It is not right that we are held hostage by the rump fringe of political party supporters. Of course, the Right will froth at the mouth and the Left cry out in anguish, but the ramifications of our broken system are having real implications for our country. If you can’t accept that Liz Truss was a disaster for the domestic agenda, then look the way we’re being ridiculed internationally. Joe Biden accused her of “trickle down economics”, while Vladimir Putin stuck a typically belittling and misogynistic boot in: “The girl was a little bit out of it,” he said. Both men have their own agendas, but we need political leaders who are respected abroad, not mocked. We simply cannot let the political system go so Liz Truss ever again.
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