Donald Macintyre: The Tories' nightmare is about to get much worse

'The election rules are not really calculated to put Conservatism back in the real world'

Of the two women whose late interventions have helped to galvanise the Tory leadership contest, it's Baroness Thatcher's which has the greatest resonance. Amanda Platell's now famous video diary was moderately entertaining. But as a missile directed towards the Michael Portillo campaign it was hardly an Exocet. She didn't finger him personally for briefing against Mr Hague and she rather enhanced his reputation for sensible liberalism by revealing that he had been in favour of instantly disavowing Lady Thatcher's negation of "multiculturalism" during the election campaign.

Lady Thatcher's brutal correction of what may have been her original intention to back Mr Portillo against Ken Clarke – on the now clearly mistaken grounds that Iain Duncan Smith was not going to be a credible candidate of the right – is a good deal more potentially serious for Mr Portillo. Coming shortly before Michael Ancram's backing for Mr Duncan Smith – a blow to Mr Clarke as well as to Mr Portillo – it strengthens the grip on a sizeable group of his hard-right supporters who would have been still inclined, amazingly after all these years, to do whatever she thought best.

Interesting (though still inconclusive) as all this is, none of it should disguise the fact this has turned out to be a truly barmy system for electing a party leader. The first madness concerns the time it takes. So far this has done no more than disable for a protracted period the Tories' capacity for opposition.

To take just one example, last week the Government, utterly deaf to mounting complaints of its contempt for parliament, sought shamelessly to extinguish backbench criticism and tighten its grip on the select committees. Yet it took until yesterday and an unavoidable Commons debate on the issue, for it to start registering properly on the Tories' radar screen.

But this is as nought as to what might happen if the Conservatives were actually in office. Supposing the Conservative prime minister had died of a heart attack. The disarray into which a Conservative government would be thrown by a leadership contest like this, not to mention the impact on sterling and market confidence, can only be imagined.

But that's not all. For the rules are a nightmare. They are, for example, utterly silent on the issue of a tie, at least a possibility in today's third ballot, just as it was a reality in the first one last week. (If you think this is too unlikely a prospect to be relevant, you ignore the considerable time which the campaign managers and the 1922 Committee have now spent discussing it.)

Not surprisingly the first thought of Michael Spicer, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, was that in this event all three candidates should go forth to a ballot of the members. Politically that was entirely logical; if the MPs could not decide between second and third place why should the members be deprived of making the choice themselves? But the rules appear to make that course impossible.

Rule 33 for the parliamentary ballot is explicit that the members have to choose between two candidates if there is a contest. Paragraph six of Schedule 2 of the party constitution, moreover, provides that "a candidate achieving more than 50 per cent of the vote shall be declared elected leader of the party".

In a three-way contest the winning candidate would be much less likely to achieve a 50 per cent majority. Which means that it currently looks as if the ballot will have to be run and rerun until the tie is eradicated. (This, at any rate, is what the executive of the 1922 Committee has now decided.)

Not only could that prolong the agony. It could also prove manifestly unfair, since it would allow the leader to choose his opponent. Let's suppose, for example, that Iain Duncan Smith moves into the lead and Michael Portillo and Ken Clarke tie for second and third place. It would then be possible for Mr Duncan Smith's supporters to try some tactical voting with impunity. They could "lend" the minimum number of votes to Mr Portillo necessary to put him ahead of Mr Clarke simply because they regard Mr Portillo as easier to beat among the members. Or vice versa.

All this is also relevant in an outcome in which there is not a tie but in which the candidates are bunched very close together. Again, in equity and in the interests of a satisfied membership, there is a strong case for all three candidates going forward to the party membership.

Let us suppose, merely for the sake of argument, that the leading candidate gets 57 votes, the runner-up 55 and the third candidate 54. The membership who support the third candidate – and they could even be a majority – will not take kindly to having their man excluded from the ballot. The party will then have let the genie of membership participation out of the bottle while blatantly hobbling their freedom to exercise it.

This may not be absolutely irreversible. Even the curiously phrased "50 per cent rule" in the party constitution could be open to challenge. It could even be varied to procure a different electoral system – such as the alternative vote – designed to allow a 50 per cent majority even with three candidates. But this would be very difficult to achieve during the current ballot. It might require a referendum of members. It would prolong the process even further. And it would certainly add to the uproar.

But in any case it underlines just how crazy the rules are. This applies whatever the order of the candidates declared today. There is even just a risk that Mr Portillo will now come third, given that his campaign has faltered just as Mr Duncan Smith's has strengthened – not least through Michael Ancram's decision to forego his hunger for unity and back him. It can't be stressed enough that, whatever the result, a two-out-of-three membership contest, if all the candidates are bunched closely, is an outcome from hell.

But let's just assume for the sake of it that Mr Clarke is excluded by again coming third. It wouldn't exactly make the party look good to the outside world. An NOP poll commissioned by a group of businessmen and released last night once again showed decisively that Mr Clarke is the favourite to woo floating voters. To take one of several answers, all pointing the same way, when voters were asked which of the three candidates "is most likely to make you vote Conservative?", 25 per cent said Mr Clarke, 12 per cent Michael Portillo and 13 per cent Iain Duncan Smith. (Mr Portillo – also boosted yesterday by significant business support – did significantly better than Mr Duncan Smith when voters were asked "who do you think is likeliest to help the Tories win", but Mr Clarke still came out top.)

It's hardly surprising that of the four David Davis supporters publicly to back Mr Clarke, three spent the last parliament out of Westminster because they lost their seats in 1997. It helps to show what exposure to the real world does for you.

But then the rules are not really calculated to put Conservatism back in the real world. The party that brought you the Common Sense Revolution has fathered an electoral system that defies the very meaning of the word.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk