How much time does it take to pick a new party leader under the Conservative Party's current rules? That is, if Cameron said tomorrow "I am resigning effective as soon a replacement is chosen", how long it would it take for the replacement to be chosen? Or would he actually need to create a vacancy first, thereby requiring a caretaker PM to take over for a while?
It took about six months in 2005, and Howard hung around as Opposition Leader until they elected someone. They might be able to speed it up if it wasn't right after an election, I don't know.
Its a very different system to that used by most of the other parties now, in that the Parliamentary party have a much bigger role. With Labour (and I think the Lib Dems although things may have changed now they have 8 MPs) you need a certain percentage of the parliamentary party to nominate you before you get on the ballot; but after that its preferential voting for party members (and union members and registered supporters) to elect the leader. For the Tories the parliamentary party knock the initial list they have down to two people who go onto the Membership to vote on; meaning that the chances of someone popular with the Membership but not necessarily the parliamentary party (someone like a Liam Fox who's oddly popular amongst Tory members) getting in are very slim. This is why I think that Boris won't win the leadership: I think that there's a good chance that he'll not be able to break into the top two spots among Tory MPs. The system might be changed, but honestly I don't think they well: the Corbyn thing might scare them away from giving power to the membership.
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