Here’s an interesting one for the next five years of Tory parliamentary politics. Under the current rules for electing the leader of the Conservative Party – introduced in 1998 – a leadership contest can be triggered in two ways: if 15% of Conservative MPs write to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee saying they no longer have confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party, and the leader then loses that vote; or, if the current leader resigns. In the previous parliament, the threshold was 54 letters – it slowly reduced due to by-elections but it was around that mark…
The Tories now have 121 MPs. Under the 15% rule, that would mean just 18 MPs could remove the leader with letters of no confidence. In a parliamentary party of this size, with its loose allegiances and slightly random makeup in terms of factions, the Conservatives could well be caught in endless leadership elections over this parliament under the current rules. After all, they managed multiple votes of no confidence in leaders last time. That’s probably especially true if the Tories choose a strongly ideological leader, either from the right or from the centre…
The rules are controlled by the 1922 Committee executive, which will be elected today after the existing executive was pretty much wiped out and Sir Graham Brady, the previous Chairman, stepped down. The only two executive members to survive were Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Bob Blackman, who are both standing for Chairman – any other declarations of candidature are due by 1500 today with the vote taking place at 1900. What will the men in grey suits do with the current rulebook…
Speaking to Adam Boulton on Times Radio about kicking the Golders Green suspect, Heidi Alexander said:
“I thought that if I was in the shoes of that police officer, then if I’m honest, given the situation, and the fact that he had a backpack on his back, and they were worried about whether that might go off, I could, if I was a police officer, frankly, I could see myself having taken similar action.”