Truss - Her selection as Conservative Party leader

Boris Johnson led the Conservative Party to election victory in December 2019 but resigned as party leader in July 2022. The background to that is in a previous post  -  Johnson announces his departure. 

His resignation required the party to choose a new leader and a lengthy process took place which  culminated in a ballot of party members with Elizabeth Truss emerging as leader. As I wrote at the time, the effect was that there was a "club" choosing the next Prime Minister?

On 6 September 2022, just two days before her death, Queen Elizabeth II duly appointed Truss as Prime Minister.

The appointment of Prime Minister is

, in law, a matter for the Sovereign but constitutional convention requires that the appointment goes to the individual best able to command the confidence of the House of Commons. For this reason, HM The Queen was not, in practice, free to appoint anyone other than Truss.

Truss resigned on 25 October 2022- (details in this previous post). It then fell to HM King Charles III to appoint her successor, Rishi Sunak MP,  as Prime Minister. Sunak was also chosen by the Conservative Party but, in the event, a ballot of members was not required because he emerged as "winner" from ballots held by Conservative MPs in their 1922 committee.

Mr Justice Fordham, sitting in the High Court, has heard an application by Tortoise Media which seeks to bring a legal challenge against the Conservative Party after it declined to answer nine questions over the status and demographics of its members who chose Truss as leader in 2022.

Tory party facing bid to bring High Court challenge over leadership election (msn.com)

The Conservative Party opposes the application arguing that its leadership election was not the exercise of a public function or governmental power. After all, says the party, it was the Queen who was responsible for appointing Truss. 

Counsel for Tortoise Media (Alan Payne KC) argued that the case touched on “fundamental matters of transparency and accountability” and related to “one of the least democratic aspects in the constitutional process in electing the Prime Minister”. Whilst Tortoise was not challenging the actual outcome of the leadership election, there was a public interest in information relating to the integrity of the election process - e.g. "foreign influence, checks carried out to ensure that members are eligible to vote, confirmation as to whether members under the national voting age are able to vote in the election etc.”

One may have sympathy with the wish to have greater transparency of the process, this may be an area where angels fear to tread. The judge will hand down his decision in writing at a later date.

Home - Tortoise (tortoisemedia.com)