Politics

Why did Change UK end up splitting? Well, there were the personality clashes. And then there was the failure to attract more MPs who were supposed to break off from their existing parties to join the quest to change politics. But the biggest reason the party ended up in this mess was that simply it became a party. When it started off as the Independent Group, its members seemed keen to cast their new caucus as something loose and exploratory, rather than a formal political party. In fact, I understand that three of the MPs - Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Luciana Berger - who announced they were leaving today were very resistant to the idea that the group should register as a political party. But in the end they were overruled, particularly by Chris Leslie.

The no-deal Catch 22 for the Tories is well-established, bringing comfort to those who oppose no-deal (and Brexit) and worry to those who rightly see no-deal as the only way of actually leaving the EU. The idea is that the Tories cannot fight an election until Britain has genuinely left the EU, but that it will be impossible to leave without an election that would put Corbyn in power and stop Brexit altogether. The conclusion drawn by some Tories is that the new prime minister, whoever it is, will have to ask for another extension. But that's wrong. And while there is an existential issue for the Tories, there could be an even worse one for Labour – and even a dilemma for the Brexit Party: should they seek a pact with the Tories?

The Conservative Party was founded 185 years ago and may not survive the next five. YouGov and Opinium both put the Tories in third place and on less than 20 per cent of the vote. They managed just 8.8 per cent in the European election, coming fifth behind the Greens and losing all but four of their MEPs. The primary cause of la crise actuelle is the government’s failure to deliver Brexit and it is to this which much of the Tory leadership conversation is addressed. However, there are other factors, structural and social, which have depressed the Tory vote and candidates to replace Theresa May are keen to prove they can win voters back to their party’s tarnished brand.

In Choosing A Leader, what remains one of the best books published on British leadership contests (although I appreciate this is a niche market), Len Stark argued that the procedures parties used when selecting their leaders rarely made much of a difference. With a handful of exceptions, he demonstrated that the same candidate would have won, no matter how the party went about making its choice. Parties chose candidates who will unite them, he argued, after which what mattered was who was most electorally appealing or most competent – and they did that regardless of the rulebook. Yet there were exceptions, not all of them inconsequential.