I HAVE A BAD RECORD ON voting in Conservative leadership elections. I managed not to vote in either the IDS/Ken Clarke election or the David Davis/David Cameron election, because I had resigned from the party in protest at its support for House of Lords reform and ID cards. In 2022 I also abstained, although on this occasion by choice rather than because I wasn’t eligible as an elector.
This decision I blame almost entirely on the late Henry Kissinger, whose book on leadership I was reading. It held such an