Leadership Election

Leadership Election in United Kingdom

Leadership Election in the History

Leadership elections occur when the current leader of a party resigns, or is voted out by his/her party. Both the Conservatives and Labour have different processes for this. Labour Candidates must seek 12.5% support of Labour MPs who sit in the house of Commons. There are 3 groups of people who get to vote in this election: Labour MPs or MEPs, Labour Party members, and people in affiliated organisations such as unions. The Alternative Vote System is used to decide the winner in which the second choices of voters are taken into account until one candidate has a majority. The main thing to understand about this process is that it means that an MP may become party leader without the winning the popular vote of MPs or party membership. Ed Milliband won the 2010 leadership election because trade unions favoured him, meaning that despite David Milliband’s popularity within the party Ed Milliband won. A similar thing happened in Neil Kinnock’s election. Labour’s inclusion of unions in the process traditionally contributes to their status as a grass roots party that relies on a ‘bottom up’ system. The Conservative Party follows a similar system in terms of the use of the Alternative Vote system . However the list of candidates is reduced to two by MPs, and then the leader is voted for by all paying members. However, there is no input from affiliated societies or unions.


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