‘No one’ oversees ballot when party members pick new prime minister, Tories admit

Senior official conceded ‘there’s no independent oversight’ – to news outlet that enrolled Archie, a pet tortoise, to vote in last race

The Conservatives admitted that no independent body supervises a ballot of its members, it has emerged – as the party faithful could choose the next prime minister again.

There was a “painfully long pause on the phone” when the question was posed to a senior Tory official after security weaknesses were exposed in the contest that picked Liz Truss, an ex-BBC news chief revealed.

Eventually, the official admitted “no one, there’s no independent oversight,” James Harding, now the director of Tortoise Media said.

The outlet is seeking a judicial review of the Tory election process, after successfully enrolling a pet tortoise named Archie, two foreign nationals and Margaret Thatcher – under her maiden name Margaret Roberts – as members, able to vote.

The controversy has blown up again after Ms Truss’s resignation, with the party set, potentially, to conduct an extraordinary three-day online ballot of its 170,000 members to pick her successor.

“If you want to have confidence in your democracy, you have to have some understanding of how the election works and that someone is supervising it,” Mr Harding told BBC Radio 4.

“And when we talked to a senior conservative official, we said, ‘who does run that oversight’? And there was one of these painfully long pauses on the phone and he said, ‘No one, there’s no independent oversight’.”

Mr Harding warned: “The Conservative Party has now set up another set of rules. By six o’clock on Monday evening, we could find ourselves in a position where we go to another membership leadership contest.

“The membership is doing that online. And how do we know that that’s secure? How do we know what oversight there is? How do we know that members themselves can vote – and can actually access a Conservative party website that is running the election for prime minister?”

Many Tory MPs are desperate to avoid the contest going to their members – fearing a repeat of having another prime minister, like Ms Truss, without enough support at Westminster.

An “indicative ballot” among MPs of the two final candidates, on Monday, will make clear who has most support and pile huge pressure on the ‘loser’ to pull out.

But Boris Johnson, if he is in that position, would be confident of triumphing in the members’ ballot. Party chiefs have not explained how it could be carried out in three or four days.

In August, the Conservatives refused to provide information about how many people could vote in the leadership race, how their identities would be verified, or infiltration attempts prevented.

Darren Mott, the party’s chief executive, claimed the process was “a private matter” because the party “is not a public body and does not carry out public functions”.

But Mr Harding said: “When it’s running the election to choose the prime minister, it’s serving the public function – and, if it’s serving the public function, it should have a certain degree of transparency and accountability.”