Still Rising: The Career Politician in the British House of Commons, the
Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet
half of all candidates with a paid political background won a seat in the
Commons, compared to less than a fifth of all teachers. Candidates who
are barristers have a relatively high success rate, as do manual workers,
although this rate is rising for the former and falling for the latter group.
Source: Author’s calculations, based on Butler & Kavanagh (1997; 2002;
2005) and Kavanagh & Cowley (2010). Figures represent the proportion
of candidates from a particular occupation who won a seat against the
total number of candidates from that occupation; n = 1918 candidates in
1997; 1919 in 2001; 1880 in 2005; 1893 in 2010.
Of all groups in Table 2, however, we see that union officials have the
highest success rate of all; with 59.2% of candidates from such a background winning a seat, this is a higher success rate than any other group
under examination. Now with its own discrete label, future success rates
of union official candidates should be closely monitored.
Why do people with an inside knowledge of politics have this edge?
The general explanation offered by Rose is compelling in its simplicity: whereas ‘outsiders’ are essentially amateurs, those with ‘inside’ experience have a sharper understanding of how politics works, and thus
have a better chance of getting elected (Rose 1991: 65). In the wake of
the 2008/2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, Conservative Party leader, Da-
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