Should a mere 180,000 Britons — out of a population of 67.5 million — choose the next prime minister? And all of them Tories, to boot? Not even Elizabeth II enjoys that prerogative, any longer, of deciding her “first minister.” Nor should the Conservative Party membership, according to one of the party’s own, Charles Walker MP.

The Tory grassroots, Mr. Walker muses, “should have got nowhere near” to choosing who will next lead the party. Instead, it should be left with the members in Parliament whose support the leader must inevitably command. 

This is how leaders were customarily chosen in Conservative politics, before the introduction of “democratic” accountability. Monarchs may have picked their premiers, but it was left to gentlemen’s clubs and aristocratic arrangements to decide who led the party.

Now, there are the problematic optics of partisans deciding who will become prime minister, as in this case, with the membership selecting between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak who will succeed Boris Johnson. It is the ensuing “blue-on-blue” bombast that worries the Tory grandees.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind deplores that the debates have “descended into trivia.” While Lord Fowler bemoans “a bad night for Conservatives,” leaving hostages to fortune. Labor, he says, have “got enough clips” of Conservative infighting “to last them through to the next election.”

Two other sticky wickets present themselves to Tories. First, the possibility that the membership embraces a leader not preferred by their MPs. While Mr. Sunak received more votes from colleagues than his rival, Ms. Truss is leading (at present) among the rank-and-file. Conservative politicians may be forced to follow the lead of someone in whom they fail to have fulsome faith.

Second, when MPs do lose confidence in their leader — as they did to such effect with Mr. Johnson — it becomes a source of contention with the membership back home, whose votes put “their guy or gal” into the top job. Again, we see this with the backlash against BoJo’s defenestration.

Arguably, it was this popular support that kept Mr. Johnson in power for so long. Dissatisfaction was brewing late last year as disclosures about Partygate began to leak. But the prime minister could always count on his backers in the country to drown out opposition among his backbenchers. 

He even survived a confidence vote on June 6, largely with the support of the “payroll vote” of Tory MPs who hold minor offices in the government. Without this backing, Mr. Johnson would likely have lost. As it was, the further disclosures of his reckless management were too much to bear, and he was brought down, one month later, as more than 50 MPs resigned from office.

Not even loyal Tories in the hinterland could save him, though they are trying. Witness the “Bring Back Boris” petition currently making the rounds. Mr. Walker, though, is not going to be swayed by outrage from the disgruntled Conservative membership.

“MPs should be left to pick party leaders because we know the strength and weaknesses of the candidate far better than the membership,” he counters, “because we serve and work with them every day in Westminster.” Nor is Mr. Walker alone in this view, he says. “It’s a view shared by many of my colleagues privately who wouldn’t dare say it publicly.”

Yet it’s difficult to blame Conservative members for wanting a say in who leads the party, over-and-above whom they select to carry the party banner in the constituencies. Politics is no longer conducted along the classic refrain of “maximal liberty and minimal government.”

Instead, it has become a free-for-all, a tussle for government hand-outs. The state, as we know, produces nothing. What it gives to some, it has to take from others. A French economist, Frédéric Bastiat, labeled this purloined largesse “plunder.”

“When plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter into the making of laws,” he wrote. There are two paths open to them. “Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”

Bastiat’s preferred path was to stop lawful plunder. Removing the power of politicians in the act of spoliation takes away an incentive for the politicization of society. Conservatives should endorse such a step. Ending plunder is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

There would be less self-interest for the membership to directly influence the selection of leader, apart from lobbying their Tory MPs as to whom they think should lead the party. Leaders would be left to focus on those needful features of minimal government.

Conservatives, in their turn — and a wise move, regardless of partisan identification — would expect no more of the state than what it can provide in equity, and could focus on their individual initiative, personal responsibility, and maximal liberty.

Mr. Walker may want the Conservative grassroots barred from meddling in leadership politics. Your Diarist predicts that until the leadership restrains itself from the redistributionist policies of the welfare state, the grassroots will be jealous of their stakeholder rights in the Tory leadership.

BrexitDiarist@gmail.com