The method by which the UK’s next prime minister will be chosen is not unprecedented but it is unusual. In 2019, Boris Johnson was propelled into Downing Street on the votes of 92,153 Tory members. But the result was, by then, a foregone conclusion. Mr Johnson had comfortably won the preceding ballot of Tory MPs and went on to trounce Jeremy Hunt.
The race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss looks much closer. The winner will not have been the first choice candidate of many of their colleagues. Even a comfortable margin of victory among the membership will amount to the endorsement of about 0.01% of the UK population. This is not just a peculiar way to appoint a leader in a democracy. It is dangerous to give the highest elected office to someone on these terms.
In the summer of 2019, Mr Johnson claimed the result of the Brexit referendum as a personal licence to govern. That was nonsense in constitutional terms, but politically resonant since he had been the figurehead of the leave campaign. He then won a substantial general election victory. That mandate will give constitutional legitimacy to his successor, but not authority.
A tight race is also likely to be more bitter, leaving the winner damaged by the public attacks of the rival camp. Close political combat would be welcome if it also gave a breadth of insight into the kind of prime minister the disfranchised public will be getting. But the terrain of battle is narrow. It is circumscribed by the rigid parameters of Conservative ideology and by the candidates’ ambivalence about the man who they are replacing.
On policy, the main difference between Mr Sunak and Ms Truss is that the former wants to cut taxes as soon as possible and the latter thinks the soonest possibility is now. That is not a clash of left and right so much as a grudge match between adjacent factions of Thatcherism.
On the question of Mr Johnson’s record, the difference is that Mr Sunak waited for years before admitting that his boss was a liability and Ms Truss still refuses to say it. Even if they grasp the scale of the damage that Mr Johnson’s turpitude inflicted on Britain’s reputation, they could not express it candidly without discrediting themselves as accomplices. Also, residual affection for the outgoing prime minister is disproportionately concentrated in the electoral pool where they must spend the next month fishing for votes.
That period should be spent building bridges between Tory party members who enjoy the privileged power to choose a prime minister and the country that must live with the consequences of their decision. It ought to be possible for Ms Truss and Mr Sunak to debate their differences in ways that also seek to restore confidence in a political system that has been discredited by the incumbent prime minister.
The most deserving successor would be one who can show some recognition that the manner of their election, while permitted by the rules of British politics, offends a certain spirit of democracy. It should be someone who seeks to repair that offence with humility and an ecumenical engagement beyond the Tory tribe. Sadly, the nature of the campaign is such that any candidate who attempted such a thing would also be less likely to win.
