ONE might have expected that political parties would put a lot of thought into the rules by which they elect or eject a leader. In fact, this is a staggeringly ad hoc process. Regulations are drawn up to suit one set of political circumstances and then look appallingly inappropriate when applied to different conditions.
The Conservative Party, which used to be capable of changing a leader overnight, spent months last year first arguing over the rules by which Michael Howard’s successor would be chosen and then employing the old regulations and ending up with Mr Howard’s preferred successor anyway. The Liberal Democrats had to conduct a ballot at unusual speed this year because the party’s constitution contained no clause that read: “What to do if the leader is outed as a drunk.”
The rules for the leadership of the Labour Party were not drawn up with the voluntary, semi-voluntary or completely involuntary resignation of the incumbent prime minister in mind. If anything, they were framed by a desire to avoid the fratricide of the 1980s, symbolised by Tony Benn’s challenges to Denis Healey for the deputy leadership in 1981 and to Neil Kinnock for the top job seven years later, and on the faint assumption that most battles for the leadership would occur in the aftermath of a general election defeat.
As a result, there is only one section of the rulebook that truly matters. It stipulates the number of MPs required for any nomination to be valid. That figure is 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party if a candidate wants to challenge a sitting leader and 12.5 per cent in the event of a vacancy. It is a high hurdle, deliberately, to prevent fringe contenders causing trouble. It means today that 44 MPs must give public backing to a would-be leader.
Almost everything else about the leadership election will be made up on the hoof. It is for the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party to draw up any timetable for a contest and to decide what to do if only one proper nomination is received.
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There is no specific provision that bans an MP from backing more than one person for the leadership and it is possible for the front-runner to “lend” MPs to a rival if he is desperate for a contest. Indeed, it is rumoured that John Smith did that in 1992 to ensure that Bryan Gould could be slaughtered by him. If there are two or more legitimate contenders, then a competition would probably occur over six to eight weeks (that would be up to the Labour NEC to determine) and the winner would have to secure a majority of a complex electoral college (invented at the behest of Mr Benn 25 years ago), which is now divided equally between parliamentarians, unions and constituency members.
It is, arguably, no way to select a prime minister. It is also, paradoxically, a procedure over which an 81-year-old former hard-left MP associated with electoral disaster has had more influence than Mr Blair or Gordon Brown.