Full results in:
These vote totals and 82.6% turnout rate suggest that Tory party membership is now a little over 172,000. Or 0.4% of the UK piopulation.
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Not quite, the Accession Council has to proclaim it, and the Accession Council includes senior Government figures.
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More details in this new thread
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How does this work? <1% of the population chooses? That’s way worse than US minority rule.
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Because technically it’s not an elected office. They’re party members voting for the leader of that party. It’s just that it is expected that the leader of the party in government can then command a majority in the House of Commons, and so that makes them Prime Minister.
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But a party with about 1% support is in charge? I’m comfortable with the 2nd or 3rd largest party getting control, but how does it come about that one that far down the line is the boss?
ETA: I’ve done some googling. The party has way more than 1% support. “Party members” is a subset of people who support the party. For a second, I thought it might be representatives in office, but that’s way too many people to be in government, right? So now I’m guessing it’s closer to “dues paying members”.
Our system evolved by iteration rather than being designed whole in a revolution.
We directly elect 650 MPs to be the legislature. Similar-ish to the lower house in the USA?
The individual who can command the support of the majority of MPs gets invited by the Crown to be PM, and they get to form a Government, i.e. be the Executive. Yes, they’re both Legislature and Executive.
In the last 200-or-so years political parties became a major player. The Tories have 365 MPs*, so whoever those 365 people agree is in charge gets invited to be PM. As a party they have agreed a process where the MPs get it down to 2 people, then the whole party votes on the last 2.
* i.e. in 365 seats their candidate got more votes than any other single candidate. This does sometimes mean getting elected on 40-something% of the vote.
Parties kind-of just happened, so the state doesn’t set the rules for leadership contests, it’s an internal party matter.
Party membership is generally pretty low around here, maybe because we don’t go through an equivalent of the Primary process every 4 years. Unless something changes, the current leaders will lead the next election, and the one after that. Though I wouldn’t bet money on no changes for 10+ years.
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That’s it. They’re dues-paying members of their local party association.
Party membership is different in the UK and the US. The key difference is that in the UK voter registration isn’t tied to party support, so joining a party is a bigger step- just for those who want to be involved in campaigning and are willing to pay membership fees.
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In US terms, party membership is determined mostly by your yard signs. In some states you have to register with one to vote in their primary, but I think that’s always free. So people generally declare themselves in one.
Looks like party membership is at 1.5% (heh, I found the same link from above). Wild, I had no idea.
Thanks for walking me through it!
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If it was like cricket, it’s like the pre-Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method days where bizarre results happened because it rained for ten minutes.
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If my experience of being a member of the Labour party is anything to go by, it’s also because you have no say in what the party does unless you are part of one of the major factions (and I wasn’t).
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At least Priti Patel is stepping down. But Truss comes with an extra side of Rees-Mogg. FML
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Cruella Braverman is in no way an improvement.
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That was my best shot at “silver lining.” It didn’t work. 
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