AT SOME POINT in June or July roughly 124,000 people in Britain can expect to receive a ballot paper in the post. It will offer them the names of two Conservative mps. The one they select will, shortly thereafter, enter 10 Downing Street as prime minister. The rest of Britain's 66m inhabitants will have no say whatsoever. Britain has changed prime ministers without elections many times before. But the coming replacement of Theresa May, who announced her resignation as Tory leader on May 24th, is different. Previously the new leader would have been picked by elected mps. But since 1996 the role of the Tory party's mps has been to whittle the candidate list down to two. Unless one of those two then withdraws (as was the case when Mrs May was elected) the final choice will be left to the membership. A group of people more likely to be of pensionable age than not, more than two-thirds male, just half the size of Wolverhampton and far less ethnically diverse has become Britain's electoral college. "It is weird, isn't it," says Shaun Gunner, one of the party's younger members. "My family and friends don't get to choose the prime minister. And I do."
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