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Solving the problem of social background in the UK ‘political class’: Do parties do things differently in Westminster, devolved and European elections?

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Abstract

It is now commonplace to criticise the failings of Westminster’s ‘political class’. One part of this criticism regards the limited extent to which Westminster politicians reflect the social background of the voting population. Each party has addressed the problem in different ways, with Labour more likely to focus on the representation of women and the Conservatives on people with ‘proper jobs’ before election.1 Devolved and European elections have provided new opportunities for parties: Labour’s push for more elected women has been relatively effective in the Scottish, Welsh and European elections; and, before UKIP made significant gains in European Parliament elections in 2014, it promised candidates who were ‘not career politicians’. Yet, overall, new levels of elected representation have not produced a distinctive ‘political class’. There is still a common pattern of professionalisation across devolved, Westminster and European parliaments, in which elected politicians have often similar kinds of education and employment background, and generally struggle to mirror the social background of their populations.

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Notes

  1. We wrote this article before the UK general election in 2015. Although it is too soon to analyse this new intake in sufficient depth, we update the analyis of gender (but leave the tables – except Table 2 – untouched) and note the rise in Conservative and SNP MPs at the expense of the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

  2. We leave the Northern Ireland Assembly out of our analysis for several reasons. The Assembly was effectively suspended for much of its brief history, while many of its legislators held a dual mandate in the Westminster Parliament. The long-standing decision of British parties to avoid contesting elections in Northern Ireland also makes it of less value for comparative purposes.

  3. Consequently, for example, the new devolved context did not appear, at least initially, to provide the same level of opportunity to increase representation for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) candidates. From 1999 to 2007 there were no BAME MSPs, from 2007 to 2011 there was one and from 2011 there were two – representing 1.6 per cent of MSPs in a country with a 2 per cent BAME population (Cairney, 2011, p. 244; see also Williams and De Lima, 2006). In 2010, in Westminster, BAME MPs accounted for 4 per cent in a country with an 8 per cent BAME population (Squires, 2010, p. 82). In 2015 it rose to 6.6 per cent (Bengtsson et al, 2015).

  4. Individual data on legislators was obtained from personal, institutional or party Websites; relevant entries in Who’s Who; and biographies of new MPs in the Madano Partnership report (Madano Report, 2010). Any further information was obtained through direct contact with the legislator concerned. Other studies also collect information on candidates, such as the Parliamentary Candidates UK project (parliamentarycandidates.org/) and the Sutton Trust (2015).

  5. Our data does not take into account changes of composition during the legislature.

  6. Women account for 37 per cent of all MEPs (Duckworth et al, 2014, p. 1).

  7. Therefore, it will not pick up on politicians who held an instrumental post as a ‘stepping stone’ immediately before becoming elected.

  8. Although we do not provide the statistical analysis to compare the relative effects of arenas and party strategies.

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Correspondence to Paul Cairney.

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Cairney, P., Keating, M. & Wilson, A. Solving the problem of social background in the UK ‘political class’: Do parties do things differently in Westminster, devolved and European elections?. Br Polit 11, 142–163 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2015.39

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