The first Conservative leadership rules (1965)

In anticipation of a new series on Tory leadership elections, I look at the party's first ever leadership rulebook - written, implemented and used for the first time in 1965.

Picture: Daily Telegraph front page reporting on the new leadership rules (26 February 1965).

Making History: the first Conservative leadership rules (1965)

by Lee David Evans

The Conservative Party is the world’s oldest and, despite current misfortunes, most successful political party. But for all its long history, Tory leadership elections are relatively recent phenomena. Prior to 1965 no rules governed the process for picking the person who would lead the party; Conservative leaders were expected to ‘emerge’ through unknown and unknowable processes, typically involving the monarch and party grandees. Every party leader until the 1960s was chosen this way, but as post-war Britain embraced all things modern and meritocratic the Conservative Party’s traditional ways of working appeared out of touch.

Alec Douglas-Home took on the party leadership in 1963 in a cloud of controversy and decided he should be the last person to ‘emerge’ into the role. Under his leadership the Conservative Party would undergo a democratic revolution and within eighteen months Douglas-Home introduced the first ever Conservative Party leadership rulebook.

The new rules

The rules were published on 25 February 1965 and began with the question of how to become a candidate. The document, which ran to just two pages, didn’t say how many MPs aspiring leaders needed to nominate them - as today, that was left to the discretion of the 1922 Committee. But there was mention of both a proposer and a seconder (both of whom could remain anonymous) and it was specified that the candidate must consent to being nominated.

All Conservative and National Liberal MPs (who took the Conservative whip) were eligible to vote for the leader over a series of ballots. In the first round, MPs were to be asked to indicate one candidate they wished to support. Discussions leading up to the publication of the rules expressed the widespread hope that the party’s MPs would have a clear favourite to take the helm. In a tweak to conventional first-past-the-post elections, the rules specified how such a clear favourite would be determined:

If as a result of this ballot one candidate both (i) receives an overall majority and (ii) receives 15 per cent more of the votes cast than any other candidate, he will be elected.

If the winning candidate failed to achieve this supermajority, there would be a second ballot. Unlike the current contest to find a party leader, which is being held over several months, the 1965 rulebook stipulated that the process must be a speedy one: the second ballot had to be held within 2-4 days of the first ballot (excluding weekends).

Perhaps most interestingly - and I personally think this was a provision of great wisdom - all nominations from the first ballot were voided for the second ballot. Candidates had to be re-nominated but, much more importantly, new candidates who did not contest the first ballot were able to stand at this stage. This would be of very significant consequences in the years ahead.

The thinking was that, if no candidate won both a majority of votes and led by 15% in the first ballot, then the parliamentary party did not have a clear favourite to lead it from among the nominated candidates - but it remained possible that such a person, perhaps a reluctant but unifying figure, still existed. If they did, they had the chance to enter the contest at this stage. (This was a nod to 1911, when the two leading contenders for the Tory leadership, Austen Chamberlain and Walter Long, were persuaded to stand aside in favour of an alternative, Andrew Bonar Law). In spite of the likelihood of new candidates, in the second ballot the provision for the supermajority no longer applied; any candidate receiving an overall majority of votes would be declared the winner.

Should nobody emerge with majority support at the second ballot, then a third ballot could be held. By this stage, no new candidates could enter the process and the race, in fact, began to lose contestants: only the top three candidates from the previous round could contest this ballot.

In a new twist, the voting system would also be slightly different in round three in order to generate a definite winner. MPs were asked to use a form of the Supplementary Vote (lately of Police & Crime Commissioner and English Mayoral elections), which meant:

‘... each voter must indicate two preferences amongst the three candidates by placing the figure '1' opposite the name of his preferred candidate and the figure '2' opposite the name of his second choice. The scrutineers will proceed to add the number of first preference votes received by each candidate, eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of first preference votes and redistribute the votes of those giving him as their first preference amongst the two remaining candidates in accordance with their second preference.’

All of which was to say that whoever commanded a majority of votes, either through their own first preferences or via the second preferences of the third placed candidate, would be declared the MPs’ choice for leader.

Finally, the name of the winning candidate would go to a party meeting. Such meetings had been taking place since the beginning of the century to confirm the choice of leader. A separate document, published in May, specified that the meeting ‘would be constituted exactly as at present,’ which meant MPs, peers, adopted parliamentary candidates and members of the Executive of the Nation Union (i.e. the party’s most senior volunteers) would have the final say on the choice of leader. They had never before rejected the emerged leader and it was seen as ‘unlikely’ that they would reject the MPs choice, either. If they did, the rules said no more than ‘the Party Meeting would be adjourned and the matter referred back to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee.’

A role for the members?