Or should they?

A number of conservative organisations have been making the argument that it is unfair for the Conservative MPs to effectively decide who the next leader of the Conservative party will be.

One notable commentator said:

“The Parliamentary Elite should not be dictating the shortlist amongst themselves.

Conservative Party members should be able to vote for any candidate who's standing for party leader. Not a choice of 2, pre-selected by MPs”

Going so far as to call it a ‘stitch-up’. Notable conservative think-tanks and other grassroots conservative organisations have suggested that:

"2 out of the last 4 PMs were selected behind closed doors in horse trading deals

For a modern democracy of 65mn people that isn't right

So what we want to see is a primary before Conservative members, with MPs nominating candidates-but not whittling down to a final 2"

and:

“We NEED to see primaries before candidate selection is whittled down behind closed doors.

This is a democracy. The future PM MUST have a democratic mandate from the party membership.

Don't let opaque selection deals happen again without any attempt to stop it.”

They make the case that ‘as a democracy’, the person who is to be PM should be put to the people. What is interesting to note is that by ‘people’ they stop short at the party membership, Why is that?

The argument is little different for the call from the opposition, which is to say that we should:

“hold a general election when there is a change of Prime Minister in office.”

Which was the title of a poll in 2019 which failed even to garner enough votes to receive a response.

And yet, they would, as they have made clear themselves, seek to deny the country at large that ‘opportunity’.

For the terminally political, it seems there is a desire to deny a say in anything to those they oppose, and demand a say in everything that they feel strongly about themselves. Despite cries of ‘democracy’, that doesn’t seem very democratic to me.

Perhaps I ought to explain how the Conservative party elects its leader.

Currently an MP needs to obtain a number of proposers (fellow MPs) who will support them,  in order to get themselves on the ballot, historically this was two (including themselves) however after the 2016 contest which saw a slew of candidates, this was increased to eight.

All candidates nominated in this way go through a series of ballots with sitting MPs giving their vote to their selected candidate, candidates who fail to reach the number of votes required in each voting round are eliminated until there are two candidates that remain. 

Once there is a shortlist of two candidates, these MPs are put to the party membership at large to determine their preferred candidate of the two.

It is perhaps this latter stage which causes people to feel that they have some entitlement to ‘pick the PM’ but this wasn't always the case.

The current selection rules for the Conservative party are a relatively modern invention and stem from the farcical appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963. Douglas-Home was a member of the House of Lords who was picked for office by the outgoing PM, Harold Macmillan, despite determinations from various other sitting MPs to support Richard Butler as a leader who could unite the country behind the party. Macmillan’s heir was chosen instead in his belief that Home could unite the party. Douglas-Home, having been parachuted in to a safe seat and renouncing his lordship in order to sit in the Commons, would serve as PM for less than one year and demonstrate that he could neither unite the party, nor the country behind the Conservatives.

Until that point, and despite other contentious promotions, the outgoing Conservative PM would consult with the ruling Monarch, who is our head of state, on who he thought was best placed to form government within the party.

This point is crucially important because, despite the suggestion that the Monarch is not to interfere with politics (a modern myth), it is, in fact, the Monarch’s responsibility to appoint a Prime Minister.

What we have in the UK at the moment is a concerted effort, I would say by radical elements (whether they realise they are or not) to further undermine the powers of our head of state. I believe this is because of a lack of understanding regarding the British constitution and the conservative principle of precedent upon which our nation is built.

Let me be very clear, as a member of the general public, the ONLY representative you vote for in the House of Commons is your local MP, there are no parties and no Prime Ministerial candidates present on any single person’s ballot paper in our country. The UK is not America, We do not vote on all three powers within the UK. Ours is a constitutional Monarchy which means that we have an elected lower house which through an evolutionary process over many centuries has come to be chosen by the general public.

We have a second House, historically of a hereditary nature, based on historical appointments to titled positions by the Monarch. Lately this has become composed of people of (disputed) national importance who are predominately proposed to the Queen by her ministers and who sit as life Lords.

Finally, and most importantly, we have a Monarch whose position is hereditary and it is the Monarch who is the head of state.

Note here that the Prime Minister is categorically NOT one of these three pillars of state in his individual capacity, he is merely a part of the elected component, that being the House of Commons. The Prime Minister is exactly as the name implies, simply the first among ministers.

That said he has an important job, his responsibility is to ensure that Her Majesty's government can function in the House of Commons. Due to the advent of the party system (also a relatively modern invention in the history of parliament) the person who can usually be counted on to form government is the leader of whichever party it is that has a majority of 50%+1 MPs and the First Past the Post electoral system almost always delivers a party which can do this.

So why shouldn’t it be the party members that choose the PM? Because as happened in the Labour party with Jeremy Corbyn, it is entirely possible that the membership will return a candidate who can not form a competent government, who lacks the trust of his own MPs and is incapable and unable to perform that duty to the country and to the Monarch for which he is intended.

“If they can’t form a government then it should be put to the general public in an election” 

Is the cry I received from one notable conservative commentator whom I respect a great deal. No. Lascelles Principles (a part of our constitution which accords the Monarch the ability to reject the request of a Prime Minister, already in post, to dissolve parliament). The Monarch, if the existing parliament is still vital, viable and capable of doing it’s job, if holding an election would be detrimental to the economy and if the sovereign could rely on finding someone who COULD command a majority in the House of Commons, would ask parliament to propose someone who could command that majority, and there are MPs available to do so, whether we all like them or not.

The smooth running of government and its ability to discharge its duty is not for the public to decide, it is for the Monarch to decide. To undermine this, is, as I hope you will see, to undermine the Monarch. This is not something I would expect from people claiming to be conservatives, if they understood this.

It is put to the general public, at least once every four years, who they would like as their local representative, and that is all. These local representatives are selected, by you, based upon the platforms upon which they stand at polling day. Despite Boris electing to resign, each individual MP stood on a joint manifesto and was voted for accordingly and therefore each MP is as bound by that manifesto as any other and that manifesto still stands. The purpose of the Prime Minister, first among peers and not a president, is to discharge that manifesto as best he or she sees it and with cognisance of the difficulties of navigating it through parliament. It is vital that that person has the support of their party MPs or it makes government impossible and puts the Monarch in what has begun to be assumed to be an undesirable position.

This is why it is not put to the Membership as some kind of presidential election and this is why it is not put to the public at large.

If you disagree with this then you oppose the very bedrock of our nation and you are a radical, you find yourself in the same camp of people who believe in a general election despite there still being a significant and workable majority of conservative MPs.

I want my guy as much as anyone else, despite being called a larper for siding with a libertarian candidate (who as it turns out will not be standing). However I am a conservative and a Conservative party member and I do not believe in revolution for revolution's sake, not without first understanding the bigger picture. So what do I think?

At grassroots, I believe our focus should be on petitioning our local representatives to back our preferred candidate for the office through debate and discussion and through influence. It should not be in trying to call for the import of yet more Americanisms into our country. To do so risks further destabilising the government, our constitution and our Monarchy, it risks handing the opposition an undeserved victory though our hubris and the egoism of expecting to be able to impose upon our elected representatives, and our Monarch, a leader for the Conservative party in whom the conservative MPs could have no confidence. This would not be acceptable.