Legal action launched against Tories over leadership battle

The Conservative Party is facing legal action over its refusal to disclose details about the tiny “selectorate” of members who will choose the UK’s next prime minister.

Online magazine Tortoise, which is seeking judicial review, branded the process of picking a new Tory leader “undemocratic”, as it effectively places the choice of a PM in the hands of a few thousand individuals who are unrepresentative of the country as a whole.

In order to highlight concerns over the nature of the contest, the magazine successfully enrolled a pet tortoise named Archie, two foreign nationals, and the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher – under her maiden name Margaret Roberts – as Tory members.

All received invitations to attend leadership hustings, though they are not entitled to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as they have not been party members for the required three months.

Tortoise took the decision to take legal action after the Conservatives refused to provide information about the number of members entitled to vote for Boris Johnson’s successor, or their demographic make-up, or what measures the party takes to verify the identity of those voting in order to prevent infiltration attempts.

Conservative Party chief executive Darren Mott responded that the choice of leader is “a private matter” as the party “is not a public body and does not carry out public functions”.

In a letter in which he refused to supply the requested information, Mr Mott explained that the appointment of the new prime minister is a matter for the Queen, and that it is only a “convention” that the sovereign invites the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons to form a government.

After taking advice from lawyers, Tortoise has now written to inform the party of its intention to take legal action on the grounds that the refusal to disclose information amounts to a breach of common law and human rights law.

It described the process as “undemocratic in its conspicuous lack of transparency and against the principle of open and fair democracy”.

The membership accounts for little more than 0.2 per cent of the UK population and is believed to include non-UK citizens and underage voters, said the magazine.

“We know more about the membership of the Chinese Communist Party – their age, gender, geography, job – than we do about the Conservative Party members choosing our prime minister,” said the magazine.

Although there are estimated to be around 160,000 people eligible as members to vote in the leadership election, the party routinely refuses to disclose the actual figure or to discuss the make-up of its membership.

Tortoise’s editor, James Harding, said: “This is no way to choose the person who, from next week, will be prime minister of a nuclear-armed G7 nation with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

“This election is obviously undemocratic. The party’s insistence on secrecy is also unlawful. We are a newsroom; our job is to inform; if the Conservative Party refuses to disclose information [that is] in the public interest, we can’t just shrug, we need to take it to court.

“The public surely has the right to know who gets to choose who runs the country and what is done to ensure the election is clean and safe.”

There was no immediate response from Conservative campaign headquarters to a request for comment on the threat of legal action.