John Barnes, Historian

Leaders of the Party

Since 1834 the Conservative party has been led by nineteen men and one woman. Before 1965 its leaders emerged and there were times when it was not altogether clear who the overall leader was. Briefly after Peel's actions had divided the Conservative party in 1846, Bentinck led the protectionists in the Commons, while Derby emerged as the reluctant leader in the Lords. The two men were often at odds. In December 1847, after he had voted in total disregard of his party's views to remove disabilities from the Jews, Bentinck resigned and in 1848-49 the party operated without any leader in the Commons at all. That could not continue and in 1849 Disraeli was asked to act in conjunction with the veteran J.C. Herries and the Marquis of Granby. Although Granby had led briefly in the spring of 1848, neither man wished to act as sole leader. The offer to Disraeli was scarcely flattering, but he recognised that if he accepted a position in the 'triumvirate' it would be likely to lead the leadership in due course. Within weeks Herries had withdrawn and the party soon came to accept that, like it or not, only Disraeli had the ability to lead them in the Commons. Derby was by now the acknowledged leader of the party and it was he whom the Queen sent for when she wanted the Conservative party to form a government. Between 1881 and 1885 the party had a dual leadership, Northcote leading in the Commons and Salisbury in the Lords. Although it was increasingly clear that Salisbury was the predominant figure, it was not until the Queen asked him to form a government that his leadership was confirmed. In 1911 there was every possibility of an election, the principal contestants being the Conservative squire, Walter Long, and Austen Chamberlain, technically a Liberal Unionist. There were two other possibilities, Edward Carson, who decided that he had too little support to run, and Andrew Bonar Law, who refused to stand aside. Fearing a divisive struggle, Chamberlain offered to withdraw in Law's favour if Long did likewise. Long could hardly refuse and Law therefore emerged as leader in the House of Commons. His counterpart in the House of Lords was Lord Lansdowne and the two operated in tandem until December 1916. Thereafter Law was recognised as leader of the party, in part because Lloyd George treated him as such, but also because it was known that he had been asked to form a government when Asquith resigned and had decided that Lloyd George had a better chance to do so. When he retired through ill health, Austen Chamberlain succeeded him in the leadership of the Commons, but he was not regarded as leader of the party. After the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922 had made it clear that Chamberlain no longer commanded the confidence of the parliamentary party and in consequence Lloyd George resigned the Prime Ministership, Bonar Law was asked to form a government. He insisted on being elected as leader before he accepted the offer, and thereafter successive leaders went through a formal process of election by a body composed of those taking the whip in both Houses of Parliament together with representatives of the National Union and, on occasion parliamentary candidates.

It seems doubtful that the relatively informal procedures of the party could have survived as long as they did if the party had been more in opposition, but in 1868 and in 1902 there was little doubt whom the monarch should send for to form a government. There was equally little doubt in 1937, 1940 and 1955. The Queen's choice was decisive in 1885, but Northcote's obvious failings as leader of the opposition in the Commons left little doubt whom she would choose. There was more doubt in 1923 when the choice lay between the leader in the House of Lords, the Marquess Curzon, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. King George V took plenty of advice, but it was very much his own view that, since the Labour party were now the principal opposition party, the next Prime Minister must be a member of the House of Commons. In January 1957, although formally the choice lay with the Queen, the decisive voice was that of the Cabinet. In 1963 the outgoing Prime Minister arranged for elaborate soundings to be taken and conveyed to the Queen in a memorandum, supplemented by a personal interview. Both the procedure and its outcome gave rise to considerable controversy, and Sir Alec Douglas Home, who had "emerged" as Macmillan's successor, decided that in future leaders must be elected. The details of how this should be done were the subject of some debate (see entry on ELECTION OF THE LEADER), but eventually the decision was left to the Parliamentary party. Edward Heath was the first leader to be elected, and after the system had been modified to allow for the leader to be challenged, the first to lose the leadership in a ballot. John Major was the first leader to submit himself to re-election and was successful in so doing. The system for electing a leader was modified by William Hague to leave the decision between the final two candidates for the leadership to party members, but the first leader to be elected in this way, Iain Duncan Smith, suffered from the fact that he had commanded the support of slightly less than a third of his colleagues in the Commons and this undoubtedly contributed to his eventual downfall. Since Michael Howard was the only candidate to run in 2003, he was elected unopposed as leader of the party.

After the Conservative election defeat in 2005, Howard did not stand down immediately, but reshuffled his shadow cabinet and set in train an attempt to change the rules by which leaders selected. It was apparent, however, that his authority had suffered a fatal blow, and while he faced no immediate challenge, he let it be known that he was staying on in a caretaker capacity. Despite his efforts the National Convention refused to accept any change to the rules and the election of his successor took place under the existing rules. There were five contenders, David Cameron, Ken Clarke, David Davis, Liam Fox and Malcolm Rifkind. The Blackpool Conference in the autumn of 2005 remined many of the events of 1963, when the contestants took part in what amounted to an unofficial beauty parade in which the front-runner, David Davis, performed badly. Clarke was in superlative form, but in the eyes of most of those present was outperformed by Cameron. Rifkind withdrew before the Parliamentary party ballotted to identify the two candidates who would compete for support from the party membership. Clarke was eliminated on the first ballot and Fox on the second, leaving Cameron and Davis to compete in the party hustings. Cameron had had a plurality of the parliamentary votes and he scored a convincing majority (with 68% of the vote) when the result of the election was announced on 6 December 2005. David Cameron was the fourth leader of the party in eight years, a measure both of the party's lack of electoral success and its ruthless attitude towards leaders who failed to deliver it.

Leaders of the party