The Professor Will See You Now: newbies

4 min read2 hr

In an occasional series, Professor Philip Cowley offers a political science lesson for The House’s readers. This week: newbies

The day before my wedding, en route with my wife-to-be to a wedding rehearsal and running well behind schedule, I stopped to take a photo of a street sign.

“I say, darling, would you mind telling me what you are doing?” she asked (or something like that, I may not have got the precise words correct). “It’s Milk Street,” I replied. “It played an important part in the 1975 Tory leadership contest.” “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she said. I have definitely remembered that last bit correctly.

Six individuals stood as candidates in that contest. Only one of them, Sir Geoffrey Howe, had been in the House of Commons for less than 10 years. Indeed, of the 53 candidates for the leadership of the three main political parties in the 16 leadership contests between 1963 and 1994, only five had under a decade’s experience in the Commons at the point at which they stood. Howe aside, the other four were Liberals or Liberal Democrats. Collectively these five constituted fewer than 10 per cent of all the candidates. The newbies were the outliers.

Compare that with now. Of the last two candidates standing in this Conservative contest, Robert Jenrick was elected in 2014. Kemi Badenoch has been an MP for just seven years and yet this is her second leadership contest. James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat: both under a decade. The most experienced candidates, Mel Stride and Priti Patel, had 14 years of Commons experience each – but they were the first two eliminated.

Nor are these the exceptions. Of the eight candidates who fought the last proper Conservative leadership contest in 2022, only one had had more than 12 years in the Commons under their belt – and he went out in the first round. By the end of 2022 Rishi Sunak had been an MP for seven years, taken part in two leadership contests, and become prime minister.

Similarly, of the three candidates who contested Labour’s leadership in 2020, the most experienced – Lisa Nandy – had only been an MP for a decade; both the first and second placed candidates had been MPs for a mere five years.

I first made this point over a decade ago, when the three major parties were all led by people – David Cameron, Ed Miliband, and Nick Clegg – who assumed the leadership having served at most a term in the House of Commons; in the case of Clegg, it was just two years. Indeed, at the time they assumed the leadership of their parties, Cameron and Miliband were not just the least experienced leaders of the parliamentary parties in the post-war era, but the least experienced candidates.

The contrast with what came before was stark. Prior to Miliband, the average post-war Labour leader had 19 years of parliamentary experience under their belt. Prior to Cameron, the average Conservative one had 22.

There are obviously still some exceptions to the rise of the newbie – both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May had reasonable parliamentary experience, as did Ed Davey. But it is now the old hands who are the outliers. Something has changed.

This is partly the consequence of a speeding up of parliamentary careers and partly about the growing importance of significant pre-parliamentary political experience – the rise of the spad and so on.

But whatever the cause, it has consequences for Parliament. Historically one of its key functions was as a recruitment pool and training ground for would-be ministers and party leaders. It still retains its near-monopoly status on ministerial ambition – the only way to the top remains through the Commons – but its value as a place where would-be leaders are tested and tried out appears to be on the wane. There is a lot of talk, often misguided and historically inaccurate, about parliamentary decline; yet here is one place where the role of the Commons does appear to be changing.

Your further reading for this week: P Cowley, Arise, Novice Leader! The Continuing Rise of the Career Politician in Britain, Politics (2012); S Barber, Arise, Careerless Politician: The Rise of the Professional Party Leader, Politics (2014)

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