Hypothetically, you chair a meeting by consent and you lead a party by consent. In the NEC for instance the Chairperson needs the vociferous backing of at least one person, the Leader needs more. However, if every meeting is full of confrontation, the Chairperson is in a very weak position. Unless you feel you are making progress there is not a lot of point of being involved at all.
(As a grass roots worker it has been clear to me for over ten years, that for a large part of the time the NEC and its various offshoots have been ineffective or incompetent).
So, whoever stands as Leader needs to be sure they have sufficient backing. Just having more votes from the membership is not enough. Both UKIP and other parties have shown the folly of leaders being elected by the membership, most of whom take no part whatsoever in the everyday running of the party let alone its management.
Anybody standing for leader needs to have public support from the people they will be working with on a day to day basis. Therefore the Party needs to devise a system of lobbying so that the number of candidates for the leadership can be reduced to two, and certainly no more than three. The election must be by STV.
Anybody standing for leader without knowing intimately the people they will have to work with if elected, are wasting not only their own time but everybody else's. Having supreme confidence in ones own intellect, political knowledge and with a track record in other fields is unlikely to make a successful leader.
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