Boris Johnson has been elected as prime minister thanks to 0.14% of the population (Picture: AP)

Boris Johnson has been elected as prime minister by 92,000 people who are predominately male, white, middle-class pensioners.

The leadership contest between Jeremy Hunt and the former London Mayor was decided by 159,000 Tory Party members, rather than the general public.

It’s not the first time a prime minister has been elected without a general election, but many are questioning why our new leader should be chosen by 0.14 per cent of Britain’s population.

Experts have looked closely at the Conservative membership and found it is ‘entirely unrepresentative’ of the general population based on gender, wealth, ethnicity and their hard-line attitudes against Brussels.




Research has confirmed that 70% of party members are male and 97% are white British.

The average age is 57, although over 40% of the group is aged 65 or above.

Boris Johnson only has a few months to deliver Brexit (Picture: Reuters)

Boris Johnson won over the Tory Party members but will he win over the country? (Picture: George Cracknell Wright/LNP)

Members are concentrated in the southern half of the country with six out of ten living in Eastern England, London, the south east and the south west.

Some 86% of them fall into the ABC1 category, used by researchers to describe the top social grade.

Politics professor Tim Bale told Metro.co.uk: ‘The average member will be a man, in his late 50s, will be white British, will live in the south of England and be comfortably off.

‘They are certainly more comfortably off than most people and certainly not representative in terms of ethnicity.

‘In the UK some 15% of people come from ethnic minority backgrounds whereas only 3% of those in the Conservative party do.’

Prof Bale, from Queen Mary University, said there has been a hardening of attitudes against the EU by grassroots Tories in the last few years.

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The average age of Tory members is 57 and most of them are male and white (Picture: Getty)

In 2016, 80% of Tory members voted to Leave and now two-thirds want to exit the bloc without a deal.

Some 90% would be opposed to a second referendum or a People’s Vote on the exact terms of our exit, scheduled for October 31.

Prof Bale added: ‘There is a considerable difference between the party membership and the population as a whole.

‘Surveys show only a quarter of voters would leave without a deal but two-thirds of party members prefer the option of no-deal.

‘We had Theresa May saying “no-deal is better than a bad deal”.

‘Then you had “celebrity politicians” like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson talking about no-deal.

‘That has definitely had an impact on the views of Conservative party members.’

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