We must be clear that political history will be made on September 5. What makes the contest special is that, if the polls and bets are right, members of a political party are set to choose a prime minister, Liz Truss, who has not been voted in by Tory MPs or the country itself. Truss will be the third prime minister chosen by the Tories in the middle of parliament, after party members got the final say in the leadership contest. But she will be the first to win through party members overturning the choice of MPs from previous rounds. Until the 21st century, when a prime minister resigned during a parliament, his successor was chosen either informally or by ballot among the ruling party’s MPs. Among those who reached No 10 in this way in the post-war period were James Callaghan and John Major. This was a logical adaptation of the parliamentary system, under which MPs are chosen by general election and the government rests in the hands of the leader of the party who can command a majority in the House of Commons. However, the leadership electorate has now been widened (since 1981 for Labor and 1998 for the Tories) to include a role for party members. There have been four occasions when party members have been empowered to choose a British Prime Minister mid-parliament. In the first, Gordon Brown won the Labor contest unopposed in 2007 because there was no other candidate to succeed Tony Blair. Theresa May won the second, in 2016, by default because Andrea Leadsom’s withdrawal made a vote for members unnecessary. Johnson did face a ballot in 2019, becoming the first British prime minister to be chosen by members of a ruling party. but, crucially, he was also the clear first choice of MPs in all previous parliamentary rounds. This will not apply to Truss. Unlike May in 2016 or Johnson in 2019, she is not the first choice of Tory MPs. Only 50 of the party’s 357 MPs (14%) voted for her in the first round in July. He followed both Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt through the next three rounds of the competition before edging out Mordaunt in the fifth round to advance to the members’ second round with Sunak. Even in the final round among MPs, Truss had the support of only 113 MPs, or 31.6% of the total. However, it is she who now looks likely to cross the No 10 mark next month. That does not make Truss an illegitimate prime minister. But it makes her weak. It also means she is a new prime minister, since her mandate to lead comes from her extra-parliamentary status as a member of the party, not from parliament itself. This should make advocates of representative democracy wary. It will cause problems. Furthermore, compared to a general election, where the choice of prime minister is governed by rules to ensure some sort of balance, a party member election is more open to outside influence, as the Daily Mail clearly understands. Voters on a membership ballot are also inevitably more partisan. This may matter less in practice than in theory. The country is headed for a tumultuous economic and cost-of-living crisis. The Tory party in Westminster will no doubt rally behind its new leader, at least for a few weeks. But the moment, and what it embodies, will resonate. In a very real sense, Truss will be a prime minister imposed outside parliament. This has not happened in Britain’s parliamentary system since the Unreformation era, when monarchs still chose their first ministers, some 200 years ago. It will have political, and arguably also constitutional, implications. Allowing members of any political party to choose the prime minister is dubious in principle and fraught with problems in practice. It inevitably reshapes the institutional balances within a representative system of government such as Britain’s. But there is no going back. Prime ministers who win general elections clearly have a mandate from the country. Those who come to work in between simply inherit theirs. Recent interim leaders are concerned about this. Brown, May and Johnson spent their first months in Downing Street looking for an opportunity to secure their own separate mandate. Brown bottled his opportunity. May wasted hers. Johnson seized him triumphantly. What mandate will Thras claim to rule? He will inherit the fiscally expansionary Brexit mandate that Johnson won in 2019 from a broad coalition of voters across Britain. But it will only be at No 10 because of the mandate from a member of the party who, as we should all know by now, is disproportionately old, male, white, southern English and right-wing. Its voters want smaller government, lower taxes and a harder Brexit. Truss’ response to this dilemma will determine the fate of her premiership. But this new kind of prime minister inevitably faces the need to more firmly establish his new kind of legitimacy. It won’t be easy. She has to manage a parliamentary party that didn’t want her as leader (as was the case with Labor under Jeremy Corbyn). to choose ministers willing to serve in disagreement with her approach (the dilemma faced by Sunak and others). to deal with the rise of ex-ministerial articles (including Johnson and Michael Gove) on the back tables; and to deliver a legislative program without the major backbench rebellions that have at times made the modern Tory party almost unmanageable. Above all, however, Truss must win the general election within the next two years. Like most interim prime ministers, she will instinctively want to stay in office until an election can no longer be avoided. Callaghan, Major and Brown all did this. However, staring down barrels of ballooning inflation, spiraling energy prices and a health service on its knees, he may decide things can only get worse. The only thing we can be sure of about Truss is that she is a bold player. That is why he stands on the doorstep of Downing Street. Despite all the risks, an early general election may be the only way open to her to turn her weak term into a strong one.
