“Are you satisfied now?” I asked a Tory modernizer after Ted Heath had been elected as the Party’s new leader. “Completely,” he replied. And the Socialists I met that afternoon were profoundly depressed. There is almost universal agreement that the change of leadership has improved the Conservatives’ electoral chances.
Mr. Heath, we were proudly told, is the first Tory leader ever to have been elected democratically. Because the Party was anxious to get a quick clean result, and the defeated candidates, immediately after the first ballot, expressed their willingness to serve under Heath, the system worked well, producing unity rather than division, reconciliation rather than bitterness. But such a happy effect is by no means guaranteed. I cannot subscribe to the unqualified praise which the new system has received. I preferred the old, informal method, the “customary processes of consultation” from which a leader “emerged.” It was, in a sense, more democratic, because it took into account the wishes not only of Tory Members of Parliament but of Tory Peers, elder statesmen and Party workers throughout the country. It allowed prudent dispositions behind the scenes: and, because there was no open contest and therefore no manifest loser, factionalism was reduced to a minimum. And it generally produced the best answer.
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