Tory leadership contest

Material for teaching the topic

Internal party democracy can be a little dry, so rather than going through the mechanics of the process, I get students to go back and follow the narrative of the latest contests within the two main parties.

To that end I have cut out and kept the form guide to the Tory race from the Guardian on Monday 11 July, i.e. before any of the main contenders had either withdrawn, or been booted out by their fellow MPs.

There is an updated version here, so it might be worth printing it out before it is superseded by any further online updates and the narrative gets a bit muddied. It is also useful to look in depth at the policy positions of the main candidates, since this has obvious overlaps with ideologies.

See the latest iteration of Alexandra Topping's overview here.

Should anyone want one, there is a useful graphic from the BBC of the mechanics of the process for selecting Conservative leader buried in here.

And this (also from the BBC online) is useful for retelling the story of how the race unfolded, here: details of the first ballot and an opinion poll showing Penny Mordaunt's dramatic change of fortunes, from just being on the shoulder of Rishi Sunak one week, to being the favourite among the bookies the next. Can she make it to the ballot of party members? And what then?