Aviva Total Politics 2010 Election Map

Total Politics - because knowledge is power

An analysis of candidates' backgrounds reveals that public school and Oxbridge domination of Conservative MPs' ranks will end in 2010. Byron Criddle reveals the probable makeup of the three main parties after the next general election 

 

 

 

As expectation of a Conservative victory at the coming general election hardens, speculation turns to how such a win will affect the social composition of the Commons. Assuming the cautious prediction of the barest of Conservative majorities, with 326 MPs, the new House could see upwards of 200 new members. What impact will such a turnover have on the demographic representativeness of Parliament and, more particularly, the Conservative Party?

 

Already it is clear that there are elements in the Labour Party who will seek to paint a Conservative victory as a return of the toffs, largely because David Cameron would be the first Old Etonian Prime Minister in nearly 50 years. It is true that Conservative MPs have traditionally been drawn from private schooling; an indication of family wealth and social elitism.

 

In 1992, the last time the Party formed a government, 62 per cent of Conservative MPs had been privately educated. In the six general elections between 1983 and 2005, private schools accounted successively for 70 per cent, 68 per cent, 62 per cent, 66 per cent, 64 per cent and 60 per cent of Conservative MPs. But in the coming election that figure is set to fall, on present estimates, to 52 per cent, because candidates selected - both in the 116 target seats the party needs to win for a Commons majority, and in the safe seats being vacated by retiring MPs - well under half the new candidates are from private schools. In the case of the target seats, the figure falls to 42 per cent. The trend is clearly towards the point at which, for the first time in the party's history, the state-educated will achieve parity with traditional public school products.

 

Moreover, most of the private-school educated MPs will have come from relatively ordinary schools, and certainly not the great boarding schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester - three schools which on present figures will provide between them only six of the expected new intake of some 150 Conservative MPs.

 

David Cameron may be an Old Etonian, but he will be one of only 16 in a 326-strong party, a mere five per cent of the total. In 1992, John Major's party had 32 Etonians (10 per cent), itself a fall from 51 (14 per cent) under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and 73 (20 per cent) under the last Old Etonian prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in 1963. The famous schools are in rapid retreat from political life. It is a limited boast but the private schools have almost lost their majority among Conservative MPs. Only seven per cent of children attend private schools and Labour with currently 18 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats with 40 per cent of their MPs privately educated, have also fallen well short of demographic representativeness.

 

Labour has always had a minority - 14 per cent in 1983, 1987 and 1992 - of MPs drawn from private schools, but that fi gure rose under Tony Blair to 16 per cent in 1997 and 18 per cent in 2005. It is now set to fall back as the ambitious, drawn to Labour in its Blairite pomp, lose their seats or look to other careers. Labour is effectively deeply embedded in the state school sector, unlike the Liberal Democrats with a 3:2 ratio of state-to-private education among their current MPs; a fi gure unlikely to be disturbed. Even if the Lib Dems escaped a Conservative surge and raise their seat total to 80, nothing would have changed. Some 42 per cent of their MPs would be privatelyeducated and doubling their number of Old Etonians to two.

 

A further measure of 'elitism' is an Oxbridge university education. The last time the Conservatives won a general election, in 1992, 42 per cent of their MPs were Oxford or Cambridge graduates. Subsequently, the figures were 50 per cent (1997), 47 per cent (2001) and 43 per cent (2005). But in the coming election that fi gure, assuming 326 Conservative MPs, and with a mere 16 Oxbridge candidates selected in the party's 116 top target seats, is set to fall to 33 per cent.

 

This represents a dramatic eclipse of the dreaming spires in Conservative politics. While the proportion of all university graduates on the Conservative benches will remain high, at 72 per cent, and similar to the 73 per cent when the party last formed a government in 1992, the balance between Oxbridge and non-Oxbridge graduates will show significant change from a 2:1 dominance of Oxbridge over all other graduates in 1992 and 1997.

 

By 2005, of 160 Conservative graduate MPs, the 86 Oxbridge graduates were almost equalled by 74 non-Oxbridge graduates, and in the coming election, a Conservative Party with 326 MPs would comprise (with more selections pending) 235 university graduates, among which the 101 Oxbridge graduates would be easily outnumbered by 135 graduates from other universities. The 1950s resonance of an 'Eton and Oxford' prime minister will be negated by a rather more prosaic reality, with the changes in the educational profile of Conservative MPs providing an insecure basis for a campaign against the Notting Hillbilly Toffs, or for Private Eye's Dave Snooty and his Pals.

 

The proportion of graduates in Labour's ranks, at 64 per cent in the current House, represents a steady rise from figures in the mid-50s in the 1980s and earlier. Within Labour's graduate block, Oxbridge graduates normally comprise a minority of about 1:3, but in a PLP reduced to 234 MPs (a likely corollary of a Conservative Party with 326 MPs), with university graduates still comprising some two-thirds of Labour MPs, the ratio of Oxbridge to other graduates would be nearer 2:5.

 

As the electoral tide goes out on Labour, its glory days of the late 1990s will eventually be recalled for the changes pioneered to increase the number of women and ethnic minority MPs. In 2005, 98 out of 355 Labour MPs were women, with a mere 30 women representing other parties, 17 of them Conservative. Labour's electoral retreat could be expected to reduce the total of women MPs, unless Conservative efforts to select more female candidates counterbalance the defeat of Labour women.

 

Going into the election with notionally 19 women MPs, the Conservatives are set to elect a total of 52 women (in a party of 326 MPs). While Labour has selected many women to fill its vacated safe seats, the party could be  reduced to 55 female MPs, so that although there are still many selections in both parties yet to come, the Conservatives in victory would have at least parity.

 

The trend is evident with ethnic minorities, where the Conservatives have also caught up with Labour. Traditionally they were outflanked, having provided a total of only three black or Asian MPs since 1945, compared to Labour's aggregate of 16. While the current House of Commons comprises 13 Labour and two Conservative ethnic minority MPs, the Conservatives could elect nine (out of 326 MPs), including two in safe seats (to join their existing two MPs in safe seats) one of whom, Priti Patel (at Witham), could be the first Asian woman MP.

 

Equally, however, Labour has a Muslim woman, Yasmin Qurishi, seeking to inherit the safe seat of Bolton SE. With a mix of losses and gains, Labour could still return 10 such MPs, but would now be rivalled in a quest for multicultural credibility by the Conservatives. In victory, the new diversity of the Conservative benches will serve to erode Labour's ownership of the race and sex equality agenda.

 

Turning finally to the occupational background of MPs, traditional patterns are broadly set to prevail over change. The last time the Conservatives formed a government (in 1992 with 336 MPs) 39 per cent of its MPs were drawn from the professions (law, medicine, engineering, accountancy, civil service, lecturing and teaching), 38 per cent from business and banking, 22 per cent from miscellaneous occupations comprising social work, the media and political aides and researchers), and one per cent from manual workers.

 

Even in opposition, as a much reduced force with 198 MPs in 2005, these patterns persisted almost exactly. But the next House could see a larger contribution from business (43 per cent) and a drift from the professions (35 per cent), with the miscellaneous group at 22 per cent.

 

Lawyers will continue to dominate among the Conservatives' professionals, but the professionalisation of most occupations has made the crossover into politics less common. As a corollary, politics has also been professionalised, as reflected in the burgeoning numberof MPs drawn from the ranks of political staffers. This is particularly refl ected in Labour's profi le after 13 years of government. On the modest scale of defeat assumed here, one in five of Labour's MPs will be political aides or researchers, exceeding the traditionally dominant teachers and lecturers.

 

Labour's occupational profi le has always been distinct, with a professional component similar in size (40 per cent in 2005) to the Conservatives', but dominated by (public sector) teachers not (private sector) lawyers, and a virtual absence (seven per cent in 2005) of MPs drawn from business.

 

Even a PLP shrunk to 150 MPs would comprise 36 per cent drawn from professions (a half educators, a third lawyers), six per cent from business, 49 per cent miscellaneous (half political staffers, a third union offi cers), and eight per cent manual workers. A dramatic defeat would thus serve to refl ect, in the PLP, Labour's core identity as a party of public sector professionals and political and union apparatchiks.

 

It is here, in the occupational character of the parties, that convergence is not apparent, and where even the Liberal Democrats exhibit a distinct profile, with currently 40 per cent of their 63 MPs drawn from professions, 29 per cent from business, in very strong contrast with Labour, and 29 per cent from miscellaneous categories, particularly journalists and party staffers. With losses and gains, the Liberal Democrats' projected 59 MPs would comprise 41 per cent from professions, 22 per cent business, 36 per cent miscellaneous (overwhelmingly political aides) and 2 per cent manual.

 

The parties will retain their distinct occupational profiles, but what will mark a Conservative-dominated House of Commons are the significant changes to Conservative MPs' demographic features - far less elitist in background, and matching Labour in representation of women and ethnic minorities.

 

 


Byron Criddle is co-author of The Almanac of British Politics