The Significance of the 2005 British Conservative Party Leadership Election

Abstract

The British Conservative Party leadership contest of 2005 was the second to be decided by members of the party at large. This article examines how and why David Cameron (modernizer) was elected by the majority of the approximately 200, 000 ordinary members, and analyzes the significance of his success. However, a problem facing this study was that remarkably little was known about the political and social views of the party membership. In addition, the Conservative rank and file, as Stuart Ball suggests, has been curiously neglected in the study of modern British politics. Accordingly, this paper examined the political views of the chairpersons of the 20 local Conservative constituency associations in Great Britain who choose the party leader. It can be demonstrated that Cameron's victory over David Davis (traditionalist) in the membership ballot reflects great expectation of a change of government, or the new Conservative government after Blair/Brown (since 1997). In any case the Conservative leader, David Cameron is ‘Tory Blair’, and the first joint creation of the Parliamentary Party, the 2005 annual conference and mass media (a TV camera) in Tory history.