Still Rising: The Career Politician in the British House of Commons, the
Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet
not consider the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet more broadly. Cairney made
an innovative contribution to the area of study by highlighting broader
‘instrumental’ occupations that are a stepping-stone towards elected office, extended beyond parliamentary researchers to trade union officials
and consultants in public relations (Cairney 2007: 214). This expanded
conceptual framework will be considered later within this article. Whilst
Cairney found evidence for an upward trajectory in the number of MPs
with ‘instrumental’ political experience, there is a need to address the
continued trajectory of the career politician in parliament up to the most
recent election, as well as to consider the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet in
light of the normative issues that have been discussed.
Evidence & Analysis
This section will test the theory that career politicians are rising in relative terms. This is possible by compiling empirical data collected by
Butler and Kavanagh (1997; 2001; 2005), and Kavanagh and Cowley
(2010) of MPs and candidates, as well as examining original data collected by the author for the current Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. The focus
of analysis is on the ‘politician/political organiser’ occupational category
used by the secondary data. The analysis shows an overall trend towards
the increasing presence of the career politician.
Table 1 presents a summary of the occupational background of the 2010
intake to the House of Commons. We can see that the politician/political
organiser increases in prominence, from 9.5% of MPs in 1997 to 14.3%
in 2010. This represents a 51% increase over thirteen years. Despite this
general rise, the proportion coming from a background in publishing
or journalism fell modestly over the last two elections. Cairney (2012)
includes these occupations as instrumental to the field of politics, and
Table 1 thus demonstrates that career politicians with this experience
are not increasing in the Commons. However, what makes the data from
2010 most useful is that due to a revision in occupational categories
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