Upon becoming Conservative leader in December 2005, David Cameron spoke passionately about the need for the Party to move on from Thatcherism. In so doing, he alluded to the need for a more compassionate and constructive Conservatism, one which was more sympathetic to the poor, and which also wanted to foster a partnership with professionals in the public sector. However, following the 2008 financial crash, the Conservative Party's policies became increasingly hostile both to welfare recipients and the public sector, whereupon the need to cut public spending was repeatedly invoked to justify major cuts in welfare provision and further marketisation or privatisation of the public sector. Regardless of Cameron's initially emollient rhetoric and allusions to One Nation Toryism, the trajectory of key Conservative policies since 2010 has remained firmly within a Thatcherite paradigm. Conservative modernisation has quietly been abandoned.

In this book, we have examined how and why Britain’s two major parties, Conservative and Labour, have chosen their leaders from their origins in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries respectively to the present day. The years that have passed since Stark’s study was published do not invalidate most of its findings for the period in question (1963–94), although its comparison between the two main parties is arguably too simplistic in that the Labour leadership campaign of 1980 may have influenced the votes of a sufficient number of MPs to change the outcome of the contest, whereas the subsequent Conservative campaigns of 1995 and 1997 (arguably) did not. The period since 2001, however, has produced a number of examples, both Conservative and Labour, which call into question the assumptions of Stark’s study, and its applicability to more recent leadership contests.

The only feature that was common to all Conservative leadership selections or appointments during the first half of the twentieth century was the absence of a formal role for Conservative MPs in expressing their choice or preference. Instead, those most closely involved in choosing a new party leader were a few senior Conservative Party parliamentarians who consulted as narrowly or widely as they deemed expedient. However, the controversial manner in which Harold Macmillan’s successor was chosen in October 1963 fatally tarnished the image of the so-called magic circle and led to the adoption of a formal method for choosing Conservative leaders that entailed a secret ballot of the party’s MPs.

Having adopted a system whereby Conservative leaders would be elected by a secret ballot of the party’s MPs, pressure for an immediate leadership election almost inevitably increased, particularly in view of the controversy which had surrounded Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s appointment in 1963 and the doubts raised by some former ministers about the accuracy or reliability of the figures cited as evidence of his support. The subsequent election of Edward Heath heralded a new era for the Conservatives, not solely in terms of intra-party democracy but also because the next three leaders came from relatively humble social backgrounds. The adoption of secret ballots for the election of Conservative leaders both reflected and reinforced the decline in numbers and influence of Old Etonians and patrician aristocrats, as the parliamentary party steadily became more meritocratic in terms of the socio-educational and occupational backgrounds of its MPs.

When the Conservative leadership rules were devised in 1965 and then revised in 1975, they had deliberately denied the extra-parliamentary party a formal input, reflecting the firm belief that MPs were best-placed to make judgements about who should lead them. Provision was made for the Conservative Party beyond Parliament to express its preferences, but on a purely consultative basis; the party’s MPs were under no obligation to vote in accordance with the views expressed by members of the extra-parliamentary party. Moreover, as Conservative MPs voted by secret ballot, there would have been no means of knowing if an individual’s choice of candidate corresponded with the preferences of the grassroots membership. Conservative MPs remained representatives exercising their judgement rather than delegates mandated to vote as instructed.

Jeremy Corbyn is a seasoned campaigner, a passionate democratic socialist and is dedicated to the causes he believes in. Throughout his political career on the backbenches, he pursued his interests largely detached from Westminster politics. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s, he sought to promote what he saw as campaigns for peace in the Middle East and South Africa, for civil rights in the UK, and for other causes. He was a strong voice against the post-9/11 military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has continued to call for peaceful solutions in Libya and Syria, and for a more balanced dialogue with Iran. As a consequence, he was never regarded as a serious contender for a position at the frontline of British politics. However, through a process of changes to the leadership selection rules following Labour’s return to opposition in 2010, a door was opened by which a contender from the left of the party was in a competitive position for the leadership. Those changes were precipitated by the Falkirk scandal and the need for the incumbent leader, Ed Miliband, to demonstrate he was willing to reform the relationship between Labour and the trade unions.

The period of Michael Foot’s leadership that began in November 1980 was one of ‘unremitting gloom’ for the Labour Party and ended in June 1983, when it received its lowest share of the vote in any general election since 1918 (Heppell, 2010a: 89–90). In this chapter, we examine the election of Labour leaders and deputy leaders by the Electoral College from its creation in 1981 until 2010, when it was used for the last time. Before doing so, we first explain why Labour’s previous system of leadership selection by the PLP alone came under increasing attack in the 1970s and how its replacement emerged thereafter. We then explain the rules governing the Electoral College in its initial configuration and how the system worked in practice.

Until 1981, Labour MPs had exclusive control of the process of choosing their party’s leader. As well as constituting the electorate, they alone would decide if and when a leadership contest should be held and, if so, which of their number would be candidates for the succession. As Punnett explains, this situation first arose and persisted until the 1970s in part because Labour was not entirely sure whether it had a party leader, as opposed to a chairman or a leader of its MPs.

How do political parties choose their leaders? Why do they choose the leaders they do? These are questions of fundamental importance in contemporary parliamentary democracies. Reflecting the breadth and diversity of the discipline of political science, the academic literature on this subject ranges from studies of specific leadership contests involving a single party or country on the one hand, to large-scale, comparative studies of developments between countries on the other. In this book, our focus is on a single country, Britain; how its two major parties, Conservative and Labour, have chosen their leaders; and which factors have shaped their choices.

Margaret Thatcher was undoubtedly one of the most charismatic and controversial party leaders and Prime Ministers in British political history. Two particular characteristics strongly impacted upon her oratorical style and rhetoric: her personal background (the grocer’s daughter from provincial Grantham), and her ideological beliefs (albeit often presented by her as ‘common sense’) or particular interpretation of Conservative philosophy. In terms of ethos, Thatcher was readily able to invoke her lower-middle class family background to establish a connection with her audience. This in turn underpinned much of her pathos, whereby Thatcher’s speeches established a sense of shared identity and common experience with her audience, in terms of belief in the importance of ‘family values’, hard work, individual liberty, personal responsibility, sobriety and thrift. Thatcher also appealed to a much wider audience by virtue of her logos, whereby she was adept at using both philosophical premises and empirical examples to attack her political opponents, while also reducing political choices to a series of binary opposites.

This chapter explains how the establishment of a Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, chaired by Lord Donovan, was a response by the Labour Government, narrowly elected in October 1964, to the problems and issues delineated in chapter one. However, it was also a quid pro quo for passing the 1965 Trade Disputes Act to restore the unions’ legal position following Rookes v Barnard. Prime Minister Harold Wilson had hoped that the Royal Commission would put forward radical and far-reaching proposals for reforming industrial relations and trade unionism, whereupon the Government could mollify trade union hostility by offering a rather more modest package of legislative reforms. However, the chapter notes that the Donovan Report, published in 1968, was strongly influenced by the Oxford School of industrial relations, and therefore proposed a strengthening of ‘voluntarism’, rather than placing collective bargaining within a clear legal framework. This was a deep disappointment to Wilson, who resolved, along with Barbara Castle, that the Labour Government would need to invoke comprehensive industrial relations legislation which went rather further than Donovan’s proposals, especially in order to tackle unofficial strikes.