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Jamie Pow
vid Cameron, opened his party’s ‘A-list’ to people who had never been
previously involved in politics. However, out of the 4,000 prospective
candidates who came forward, only four were ultimately selected as
candidates (Criddle 2010: 316). Therefore, there is a real danger that,
even if there is demand for outsiders who are in turn prepared to supply
themselves as candidates, the demands of political parties appear skewed
in the favour of insiders with political experience, almost certainly perpetuated by their proven higher success rate as candidates.
To return to trends among MPs, we can see very clear distinctions between the three main parties – the Conservative Party, the Labour Party
and the Liberal Democrats. Whilst Figure 1 demonstrates that the proportion of each party’s MPs with a professional political background
was higher in 2010 than in 1997, it also demonstrates that the rates of
change within each party are divergent; with an average (mean) rate of
increase of 3.0% for Labour after each election, compared to 0.3% for
the Conservatives, 0.5% for the Liberal Democrats, and 1.6% overall.
Indeed, despite the overall positive trend for each party, both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats experienced decreases in the number
of professionalised politicians among their parliamentary intakes. Moreover, by including the ‘publisher/journalist’ occupational category, the
trend for the Conservatives becomes negative overall (-0.5%). This is
significant for two main reasons. First, it demonstrates the importance
of how MPs’ occupational backgrounds are classified; that is, whether
we should consider publishers or journalists to be themselves ‘political’
in nature. Indeed by including other occupations for 2010, such as union
officials and those with backgrounds in public relations (see Figure 2),
the gap between Labour and the Conservatives is extended further. Second, and implied in the first point, it demonstrates that trends are not uniform across the three main parties. Regardless of what occupations are
included or excluded beyond the original ‘politician/political organiser’
category to identify career politicians, Labour has a higher proportion of