Talk:2024 Conservative Party leadership election

Date

No matter how likely it may seem, we cannot assume a date for this election. We must wait until reliable sources publish the declared date before asserting a date in anyway in this article in Wikipedia's voice. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:05, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

"Other figures"

Considering that the leader of the party must be an MP, unless the party changes the rules (or even so much as publicly considers the possibility) in order to allow non-MPs to stand, is there any constructive purpose to this section?

Not only is it rather a moot point, considering who would make good leaders/ run for candidacy if they were able to, but the only source used to back up the possibility of David Cameron's candidacy acknowledges that it would only be possible in hypothetical scenario of resigning from the Lords in order to run in a byelection, something the article describes as "extremely unlikely". 2.25.38.65 (talk) 16:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Table format

I think the separate table sections that include current and former offices could be condensed into one section like 2024 Democratic primaries/2024 Republican primaries or 2024 Iranian presidential election. All the info could be merged under a section called 'Experiences' or 'Offices held'. We could limit the number of entries to three or if we want to list all of the offices held, we could add a collapsable option. Here's an example:

Candidate	Constituency	Experience	Campaign	Ref.
James Cleverly	Braintree (2015–present)	Shadow Home Secretary (2024–present) Home Secretary (2023–2024) Foreign Secretary (2022–2023) Education Secretary (2022) Party Chair (2019–2020)	Announced: 24 July 2024 Website

TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 04:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Trim of the Candidates section needed

Since this page has existed, we've had Declared candidates, Potential candidates, Expected candidates, Declined candidates, Discussed candidates, and Previously Potential candidates. It's a bit ridiculous.

I propose we have: DECLARED; POTENTIAL (including those that have been discussed by the media and those for whom an announcement feels imminent); and DECLINED (whether or not they had seriously considered running before ultimately deciding not to.)

I see no worth in a section full of names like Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt who are categorically NOT going to be a candidate, and whose chance of being a candidate had been ended before Sunak had even resigned as leader.

In terms of trimming, given the deadline is in little more than 48 hours, it's probably pointless merging the Potential and Likely sections at this point, but I would still endorse scrapping the ex-MPs section. OGBC1992 (talk) 10:29, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree on scrapping the ex-MPs section as it's important context for the current election. Having no mention of Penny Mordaunt, despite her being seen as a frontrunner prior to the election feels like an omission. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 10:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Why is there so much unrelated stuff in the article?

There is tons of discussion in the background section that isn't really relevant to this page. If someone wants to know details about the last leadership elections or the general election campaign, there are other articles for that. Sure, it is useful to give a little bit of background in particular what caused Sunak's resignation and maybe the results of the last leadership election, but the section is really excessive. Eg, how is discussing the "D-day controversy" in any way relevant to this leadership election? 192.76.8.93 (talk) 13:05, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Candidates Exclusion

There’s some funny editing going on. Liz Truss - who was seen before the election as a potential candidate - has been excluded from the list repeatedly. This is despite several sources - including from Sky News and The Evening Standard where she gives non-denials - saying she wanted the job. Other sources which mention Truss are included yet sources that mention her are not included. This does not seem to tenable. Likewise, it’s very well sourced that both IDS and Dowden were potential candidates as caretaker leader. Both of this was a source of commentary in the run up to the general election and the Tory leadership election with IDS explicitly asked. In fact, Dorries explicitly endorsed him for this. Again, every mention was removed. James Heale from the Spectator also mentioned Gareth Davies - if Fawkes is an unreliable or insufficient source then it’s incumbent on other editors to check.

Cates’ endorsement of Jenrick is excluded when it is mentioned in the endorsements page. It doesn’t seem like the editing is informative or consistent. 2A00:23EE:2148:1E77:3419:2568:A2B7:7C71 (talk) 21:18, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello, a couple points:

• Regarding Truss, my problem is that the sourcing is sloppy. From a source included through the edit, here is a quote: 'No one expects Truss to run again'. It just seems like you put into google 'Liz Truss Tory leadership election' and copied as many articles as you can find. If you wish her to be included, choose only 1 or 2 of the best articles which seriously consider her.
  
• Caretaker leader explicitly is not the same as running for leader in the leadership election, and as such have no relevancy in this section.
  
• Regarding Guido, it is the editor who adds it's job to make sure they are including high quality sources that can be relied upon. One editor cannot be adding unreliable information and requiring others to follow behind cleaning it up. Please see this list for more information. The Spectator is not the best of sources either. It is worth also saying references should not solely be a tweet link, this is not sufficient.
  
• Please feel free to add back the Cates endorsement, this was just a manual revert in order to not have to go through and do each one individually.
  

Regards, Quinby (talk) 22:05, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I think it’s fair to say that many of the sources did say Truss was a potential candidate. Surely, the reasonable thing would be to include Truss sources that are relevant and exclude one which isn’t relevant? I will add with the relevant sources (I think Sky News is sufficient).

As for caretaker leader, I think it’s relevant because this page does not merely deal with the leadership election but the succession. Even in the context of a leadership contest, it is entirely possible that - as with 2003, 2007 and 2022 - a single candidate was put forward in the contest (in this context possibly with the understanding or agreement that they would resign at a later date). Under the leadership rules of the Conservative Party, that would be the only way for them to have chosen a new caretaker leader who wasn’t Sunak. It is also not how this page works too - Hunt has been included despite most of the commentary being as a caretaker leader. We also included IDS and David Lidington in the 2019 contest even though the commentary was largely about them being caretaker leaders. We also did include IDS on a list of potential candidates when the contest was about to start with a profile, alongside other leadership candidates. So it is strange for us to remove him. And in any case, even if I were to say that it wasn’t relevant in the context of this page, it is still the case that Dowden was seen as a potential candidate even though he was reported not to want to do the job. So he should be recorded as someone who declined to stand regardless of the case. At the very least, there should be some mention in this article that there was serious discussion about a caretaker leader with Iain Duncan Smith and Oliver Dowden being the most prominent names mentioned. This was a live and significant topic during this contest and for the succession (before Sunak chose to stay until November).

I partly agree on Gareth Davies but I do think allowance should be given for commentary. For example, we cited that Trott and Countinho were going to support Badenoch. This was removed and then it turned out that both women would go onto endorse her. I also think a political correspondent from the Spectator - as with any political correspondent - should be seen as a credible source. I will try to find a more adequate source if that is ok. There’s also a possible inclusion of Andrew Bowie who was also touted as a potential candidate. 2A00:23EE:2148:1E77:3419:2568:A2B7:7C71 (talk) 00:27, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

• Sky News ran with a short story on Truss herself saying things, not much of a discussion as the description of that section suggests.
  
• If you feel strongly about caretaker leader suggestions being added, put that somewhere else in the article (probably at the end of background). Otherwise, it clashes and gives a different view.
  
• If Dowden was spoken of as a candidate, you provided no sources to suggest such a thing.
  
• If an adequate source exits, Davies can stay. If it is solely 1 or 2 tweets which are not directly from those it is about, that would not be sufficient I believe.
  

Quinby (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I think a Sky News source where Truss explicitly refuses to rule out standing for the leadership again is sufficient to be included as a potential candidate. Politicians who wish to rule out leading a party don’t provide a non denial. This is also in the context of her being asked by a journalist if she will stand.

I think you’re not quite getting my point on a caretaker leader. The issue is that under Tory leadership rules, a caretaker leader would have to have been elected in a similar way to Howard and Sunak. So on those grounds alone, it’s sufficient for them to be included. 2A00:23EE:19A0:1D71:C5E4:49EA:D3A3:E3B3 (talk) 16:49, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Infobox

As we're down to the last 4, and there's a back and fourth about this at the moment, it seems a good time to have a discussion about how many candidates to include in the infobox. I also can't see any existing consensus here. I personally support TedEdwards position that a full listing of all the candidates and all their results means that the infobox is getting a bit overfull and therefore going against MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE to "summarize, but not supplant, the key facts". I don't see the number of votes Patel got in the first round as particularly important to the overall article, and there is already a section which lists all the results in a much better way (a table).

Additionally, none of the recent Conservative leader elections (one's that had this number of rounds of voting) seem to take this approach (2022, 2019).

Pinging those involved: @94.154.184.146:, @2a00:23ee:1c48:71cf:69f3:c36b:b92f:b822:, @TedEdwards: Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 13:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

This will be largely irrelevant by an hour from now, as the final 2 will be announced. ETA The infobox should probably just include the final two as happened with previous elections Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 13:25, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the last two should be displayed – the information displayed there is not particuarly important to the overall article, arguably it's an unnecessary duplication of information which is already in the results table DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 17:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

First I'd like to thank Cakelot1 for starting this discussion. As for why I, as a WP:BOLD edit, suggested putting in the top 4 candidates is that in this election they were the only not-yet-eliminated candidates for about a month, and spoke at the Tory conference, and after I previewed that infobox, I thought, and still do after previewing that idea with the 4th ballot having happened, it met MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE (the less information that an infobox contains, the more effectively it serves its purpose) by having not too much information while keeping the key information.

I have put the so-far suggested infoboxes below, but I would take this opportunity to criticise some arguments I've seen. One is that including all 6 candidates or only 2 is "consistent" (I've seen both): while including all the candiates, as pointed out by Cakelot, is not consistent with the 2019 and July–September 2022 elections (nor with the 1975 Conservative party leadership election), so the first arugment is obviously flawed, but the second (stated by Eastwood Park and strabane and others) also falls foul of WP:OTHERCONTENT (you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on whether similar content exists on another page). While all the infoboxes for Tory leadership elections fall under the same guidelines, just saying that we should have 2 candidates in the infobox because 2 other articles do is not a good argument, unless you can illustrate with a good argument why that would also be best for this article. I note that the discussion that resulted in candidates who didn't get through to the member's vote being excluded from the infobox in 2019 was partially based on the argument that we shouldn't blindly follow precedent from other articles, see Talk:2019 Conservative Party leadership election#Infobox update problem (WP:OSE, which was cited in that discussion, is a very similar argument to WP:OTHERCONTENT, just for deletion discussions).

I've also seen non-existent guidelines being used to support arguments: I'm pretty sure there is no guidance not to have more than 6 candidates in an infobox. I'm also going to pushback slightly on DimensionalFusion's point that it's an unnecessary duplication of information which is already in the results table. While she may just mean that including so many candidates is redundant for the infobox, nearly everything is the lead section, including the infobox, should be infomation in the main body of the article repeated (i.e. a duplication) per WP:LEAD i.e. it is a concise summary of the rest article. However if she thinks that only the core points need to be in the lead, which appears to be the case, she is absolutely right to think that. But we should have this discussion on exactly what information to include and exclude in the infobox. --TedEdwards 23:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm completely neutral on the number of candidates shown, I only think it's important to have consistent standards across similar pages. Historically for this format of elections we included the 2 who were voted on by membership. Edit: turns out I was wrong about this, in 2005 and 2001 far more candidates were shown. I think we should decide on a consistent standard for this sort of election. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 00:53, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Eastwood Park and strabane: Why do we need a consistent standards across similar pages? Each election is different, with the rules and timetable changing for each, so surely having a consistent standard, I guess by which you mean the infoboxes are based on a set a guidelines we come up, would create a sort of "jack of all trades, master of none" infobox, because we could not come up with a single standard that serves every election there's been well. What's important is that we base the infobox on the perhaps vaguer guidelines set out in MOS:INFOBOX, and ensure we can argue that each infobox meets those guidelines as best as possible. While it might be nice to have similar infoboxes across all the articles, I don't think it's important or essential, but also impossible unless you want infoboxes that under-/over-summarise what they need to summarise. --TedEdwards 22:27, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Suggested infoboxes

2024 Conservative Party leadership election 4 September – 31 October 2024 (2024-09-04 – 2024-10-31) Full results for all candidates below   Candidate Kemi Badenoch Robert Jenrick Fourth MPs' ballot 42 (35.0%) 41 (34.2%) Members' vote 53,806 (56.5%) 41,388 (43.5%) Incumbent leader Rishi Sunak 2024 Conservative Party leadership election 4 September – 31 October 2024 (2024-09-04 – 2024-10-31) Full results for all candidates below   Candidate Kemi Badenoch Robert Jenrick Third MPs' ballot 30 (25.0%) 31 (25.8%) Fourth MPs' ballot 42 (35.0%) 41 (34.2%) Members' vote 53,806 (56.5%) 41,388 (43.5%)   Candidate James Cleverly Tom Tugendhat Third MPs' ballot 39 (32.5%) 20 (16.7%) Fourth MPs' ballot 37 (30.8%) Eliminated Members' vote Eliminated Eliminated Incumbent leader Rishi Sunak 2024 Conservative Party leadership election 4 September – 31 October 2024 (2024-09-04 – 2024-10-31)   Candidate Kemi Badenoch Robert Jenrick James Cleverly First MPs' ballot 22 (18.6%) 28 (23.7%) 21 (17.8%) Second MPs' ballot 28 (23.5%) 33 (27.7%) 21 (17.6%) Third MPs' ballot 30 (25.0%) 31 (25.8%) 39 (32.5%) Fourth MPs' ballot 42 (35.0%) 41 (34.2%) 37 (30.8%) Member's ballot 53,806 (56.5%) 41,388 (43.5%) Eliminated   Candidate Tom Tugendhat Mel Stride Priti Patel First MPs' ballot 17 (14.4%) 16 (13.6%) 14 (11.9%) Second MPs' ballot 21 (17.6%) 16 (13.4%) Eliminated Third MPs' ballot 20 (16.7%) Eliminated Eliminated Fourth MPs' ballot Eliminated Eliminated Eliminated Incumbent leader Rishi Sunak

Following on from this edit from TedEdwards, I'm hoping this conversation can be rebooted (unless I'm in the minority and there is general agreement the infobox should have the final four candidates). I'm inclined to respecfully disagree with Ted on this – I think having four candidates is abitrary. I realise they all spoke at conference, but choosing to focus on that still strikes me as an arbitrary waypoint. Ultimately conference gave them all a chance to speak but held no vital step in the structure of the leadership race. I believe the infobox should either have the final two candidates or all six. — Czello ^(music) 07:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@Czello: Thank you for pinging me. I would argue not having all the candidates in the infobox could be seen as arbitrary, but as including all the candidates would create an "information overload", contrary to MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, we have to be somewhat arbritrary. I would therefore argue that including only 2 candidates is no less arbritrary than including 4, though both seem to me to be less arbitrary than say including 3 or 5 candidates (which I doubt I would find anyone supporting). However, we should strive to include the all of the most important information in the infobox, which I think is a) as I mentioned, in this election between the 2nd and 3rd ballots (about a month i.e. quite a long time) these were the four candidates and were allowed to speak at the conference and so can reasonably be called more important to mention than Stride and Patel, and b) it illustrates, rather than just leaving the lead section to say, that James Cleverly won the 3rd ballot before losing the 4th. That illustration draws more attention to that important piece of information on this election. Tldr perhaps any exclusion of candidates is arbritrary, but we should only exclude candidates to the point that no important information that could be in the infobox isn't overlooked. --TedEdwards 20:13, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I would therefore argue that including only 2 candidates is no less arbritrary than including 4 I'm not sure how this case can be made given how the Conservative leadership rules work. 4 candidates is half way through the process and doesn't meaningfully represent a particular step in the process – the final 2 candidates go off to the membership for a vote, however, which represents the final step of the race. In a way, the leadership election is between these 2 more than it was between all 6 (or 4).

Yes, these 4 were probably more important than Stride and Patel – though I'd say that more a matter of opinion/WP:OR. They did get a bigger platform, being able to speak at conference, but that's more of a publicity opportunity than a part of the process.

In short I don't feel 2 is arbitrary at all – for the same reason we only show 2 candidates in French elections; because it's the final vote, between these two, that matters – rather than a full field between everyone. Anything between the final and all six I think comes down to a matter of preference. — Czello ^(music) 07:10, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I agree that including all 6 would create information overload - 5 have been included in 2001 and 2016, and other pages such as 2021 Scottish Parliament election have much bigger infoboxes with more information. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 11:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Adding here that I think there's a case to be made for an infobox of 3 candidates, given those were the three with the most media coverage and clearly ahead of the other three Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 15:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Opinion polling

Going forward now that it's Kemi v Jenrick, maybe once more one-v-one polling numbers come in, we should create a subsection of the polling section that's simply dedicated to Kemi and Jenrick instead of building in on the multi-candidate polling chart. TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 16:47, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@TDKR Chicago 101: I probably won't be the one to find the first opinion poll, but if an editor doesn't create a new subsection(s), I hope to remember to make a WP:BOLD edit to create that subsection, as I can see the logic in your point. --TedEdwards 22:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)