Postulant A would be told to dust off his morning suit for a visit to Buckingham Palace, and Postulant B instructed to walk out into the snow and not come back for some time. Now the whole system had gone open, messy, and uncontrollably democratic. Worse, it had snarled itself up with some quite unnecessary sophistications. To win on the first ballot, a candidate needs to obtain an overall majority but also 15 percent more of the votes cast than his or her opponent. Thus, in the present case, if there were no abstentions, Mrs. Thatcher could defeat Mr. Heseltine by fifty or so votes in a straight fight and yet be driven to a second ballot. At a second ballot, other candidates might come in, complicating things furtherand splitting the vote. The 15 percent factor is discarded in this second round, but if no candidate has an overall majority the contest might still be deadlocked, and thus go into a third round. Worse, there are no provisions for candidates to drop out between the second and third rounds, and if no clear majority is obtained at the third time of asking, then a transferable-vote system operates until white smoke finally dribbles from the chimney.
The first ballot approached with the Tories in extraordinary disarray. Nobody knew quite how the voting system worked. Nobody knew who might or might not declare himself in a second ballot. Those who wanted neither Heseltine nor Thatcher would have to decide whether to abstain, and perhaps hand Thatcher a first-ballot victory, or to vote for Heseltine, and possibly give him such a head of steam that their own second-ballot candidate would have no chance. Conservative MPs faced more than tactical problems, too. Should they be loyal to the past, to a Prime Minister who had won three successive elections, or be practical about saving their own skins at the next general election? Polls published over the crucial weekend of the first-round campaign showed that while a Thatcher-led Party trailed Labour by fifteen points, a switch to Heseltine would transform the deficit into a one-point lead. Yet even if the troubled MP persuaded himself into that juicy position where personal, party, and national interests appeared to be the same, there were other, rogue factors. A cross section of the Party at this time would have shown a layer-cake effect: the Cabinet publicly supporting Thatcher, the back benches deeply split, the hard-core constituency workers very pro-Thatcher, the soft core much less committed. If you were an MP in a marginal constituency, Mrs. Thatcher might win you one solid vote from the electorate, while Mr. Heseltine might win you one and a half shaky ones. How to make the calculation? And how to explain it to your Thatcherite Party workers? Mr. Cyril Townsend, MP for Bexleyheath since 1974, decided to vote for Heseltine, though he knew that support among his own grassroots organizers was running four to one in favor of Mrs. Thatcher. The chairman of the Bexleyheath Conservative Association took Townsend aside ten minutes before a meetingof the local executive committee and urged him to keep his mouth shut about his voting intentions. “His views,” said the chairman, “went against those of the ward committees, ladies’ clubs, luncheon and supper clubs, the businessmen, the local council, and all but one senior member of the executive.” Mr. Townsend declined to keep his mouth shut; worse, he appealed over the heads of the luncheon and supper clubs, the ladies’ clubs, and the businessmen. “I believe I have the support of the majority of people who voted for me,” he declared as he endorsed Mr. Heseltine. The vice chairman of his own organization responded by demanding a new Parliamentary candidate: “I am asking [the chairman] to set the process in motion. Candidates will come forward and one of them will be Cyril Townsend. I hope he loses.”
The first ballot was held on Tuesday, November 20, and the result was perfect for the Labour Party—what Tory
The first ballot approached with the Tories in extraordinary disarray. Nobody knew quite how the voting system worked. Nobody knew who might or might not declare himself in a second ballot. Those who wanted neither Heseltine nor Thatcher would have to decide whether to abstain, and perhaps hand Thatcher a first-ballot victory, or to vote for Heseltine, and possibly give him such a head of steam that their own second-ballot candidate would have no chance. Conservative MPs faced more than tactical problems, too. Should they be loyal to the past, to a Prime Minister who had won three successive elections, or be practical about saving their own skins at the next general election? Polls published over the crucial weekend of the first-round campaign showed that while a Thatcher-led Party trailed Labour by fifteen points, a switch to Heseltine would transform the deficit into a one-point lead. Yet even if the troubled MP persuaded himself into that juicy position where personal, party, and national interests appeared to be the same, there were other, rogue factors. A cross section of the Party at this time would have shown a layer-cake effect: the Cabinet publicly supporting Thatcher, the back benches deeply split, the hard-core constituency workers very pro-Thatcher, the soft core much less committed. If you were an MP in a marginal constituency, Mrs. Thatcher might win you one solid vote from the electorate, while Mr. Heseltine might win you one and a half shaky ones. How to make the calculation? And how to explain it to your Thatcherite Party workers? Mr. Cyril Townsend, MP for Bexleyheath since 1974, decided to vote for Heseltine, though he knew that support among his own grassroots organizers was running four to one in favor of Mrs. Thatcher. The chairman of the Bexleyheath Conservative Association took Townsend aside ten minutes before a meetingof the local executive committee and urged him to keep his mouth shut about his voting intentions. “His views,” said the chairman, “went against those of the ward committees, ladies’ clubs, luncheon and supper clubs, the businessmen, the local council, and all but one senior member of the executive.” Mr. Townsend declined to keep his mouth shut; worse, he appealed over the heads of the luncheon and supper clubs, the ladies’ clubs, and the businessmen. “I believe I have the support of the majority of people who voted for me,” he declared as he endorsed Mr. Heseltine. The vice chairman of his own organization responded by demanding a new Parliamentary candidate: “I am asking [the chairman] to set the process in motion. Candidates will come forward and one of them will be Cyril Townsend. I hope he loses.”
The first ballot was held on Tuesday, November 20, and the result was perfect for the Labour Party—what Tory
Similar Books
