A little-noticed rule change allowing Tory members to vote twice in this summer’s leadership election will be key to Rishi Sunak’s hopes of salvaging his floundering bid to become prime minister, experts have told The Independent.
With online voting opening on 1 August, the former chancellor has only a matter of days to overturn rival Liz Truss’s polling advantage before tens of thousands of Conservative members cast their ballots and go on holiday, making Monday’s televised head-to-head debate on the BBC possibly his last chance to win over many of those with a vote.
But an unprecedented “second thoughts” option allows the estimated 160,000 party faithful to revise their vote if they change their minds during the six-week campaign – something which supporters believe favours the former chancellor, who they think will shine as his opponent’s tax-cutting plans are put under scrutiny.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner today dismissed the election as a “warped pantomime to win over the unrepresentative Tory selectorate… entirely divorced from the priorities of the British people”.
She called on whoever wins to call an immediate general election to “re-seek a mandate” from voters.
And prominent Truss backer Iain Duncan Smith said the new-style voting system – which allows one online vote and one postal, with only the latest of the two counting – will “create nightmares” by introducing a “complication too far” to a campaign lasting longer than a general election.
Senior Tories fear that the summer-long contest, featuring 12 hustings across the UK, will damage the party’s image further as the two contenders kick lumps out of one another in a bitter struggle to succeed Boris Johnson.
But polling guru Prof Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, told The Independent that the real battle may be over long before voting closes on 2 September. He judged as “credible” a recent YouGov poll which gave the foreign secretary a 24-point lead over the former chancellor, on 62 per cent to Sunak’s 38.
“Sunak is probably behind Truss at the moment among members and he needs to try to narrow that significantly during the course of the next two weeks, which is when it really matters,” said Prof Curtice.
“Sunak is the better performer of the two by far, but the question is whether he can demonstrate that and use it to get across an effective message in the time available to him. It’s the second part of that equation that I think is in doubt.”
Much will depend on whether Tory members make use of the “second thoughts” option, he said: “Sunak needs as much time as possible and people changing their mind could potentially give him an advantage.”
Conservative peer and leading poll-watcher Robert Hayward agreed that a “front-loaded” campaign was likely because of the tendency of voters to cast their ballots as soon as packs land on their doormats.
But he said that the new voting system was appropriate to an election where there was an unusual level of “fluidity”, with activists likely to judge the contenders not on a traditional left v right split, but on who has the best chance of delivering electoral success.
“There will be events which come to dominate the debate after a lot of people have voted,” he told The Independent. “Whether that’s a sudden increase in the cost of borrowing or a crisis in the NHS or a breakthrough in Ukraine. It’s good that they are allowing people to change their minds.”
Sources close to the Truss team acknowledged that they would not be dissuading people from voting early, but insisted that the issue was not foremost in their candidate’s mind.
And Sunak backers questioned the extent of the foreign secretary’s lead, pointing out that similar surveys at the same stage in the 2019 leadership election overstated Mr Johnson’s lead by nearly 10 points, and that many members responded “don’t know” to pollsters.
The former chancellor is known to be planning a blitz of TV and radio appearances to maximise his exposure over the crucial coming week.
And his team are still seeking the endorsement of supporters of defeated contenders, hailing the backing of George Freeman – a prominent backer of Penny Mordaunt – as an indication to activists that Sunak will be able to command the confidence of a wide swathe of the parliamentary party as leader.
But former chief whip Mark Harper, a senior Sunak supporter, was clear that “second thoughts” votes could have a decisive impact.
