Earlier this week, nearly six million people watched a live TV debate between the candidates to be our next prime minister. What they were watching marked a constitutional revolution. The winner will be Britain’s first directly-elected prime minister: placed in No. 10 not by the public, not by their elected representatives, but by Conservative Party members. That marks a fundamental shift in the location of power; one that is profoundly important, profoundly undemocratic and a recipe for gridlock in our governing institutions.
The election of a new prime minister is not an internal party matter: it is an intervention in the government of the country. The contest is being fought on fundamental questions of policy. Do we leave the EU with no deal? Do we rule out further extensions? Should parliament be suspended? On taxation, public spending and, above all, on Brexit, the whole programme of government is being rewritten to suit the preferences of 160,000 anonymous party members. Not since the days of the rotten boroughs, before the Reform Act of 1832, have a few thousand people held such extraordinary, undemocratic power.
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