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1Candidate selection is one of the key strategies used by parties to shape the face of their group in Westminster. With the prospect of an election defeat, some of the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (known as PPCs) are not only expected to be the party’s future MPs but also an indicator of both the pools of voters the party intends to target and the ideological line it will adopt once in opposition. Therefore, candidate selection operates as an essential step towards the parliamentary party’s dual function of substantive (i.e. representing the party’s ideas and values) and descriptive (i.e. representing specific social groups) representation.
2Representation has been a major issue for the Conservative Party, which has at times been seen as failing to represent the widest possible pool of voters and to reflect the diversity of British society. As a result, candidate selection has undergone various reforms over the past 30 years. These reforms have often occurred in the aftermath of electoral defeats and have been designed as effective solutions to help the party regain its electoral potential. As we will see, the first major reform was implemented in 1998, and a second one was initiated in 2005. While the first one was insufficient to lead the party to victory and the second one was more cosmetic than effective, both had lasting effects which probably contributed to changing the composition of the party in the long run. In the run-up to the 2024 election, predictions about the inevitable defeat of the Conservative Party have encouraged scholars to take a closer look at candidate selection with the idea that the party’s future collapse could trigger another organisational reform in the coming years.
- 1 Butler, Chris, Miori, Marta and Ford, Robert, “Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at t (...)
- 2 Harmer, Emily and Southern Rosalynd, “‘Girly Swots’ and the Most Diverse Parliament Ever: Women’s R (...)
- 3 Butler, et al., op. cit.
3Since the early 2020s, the literature on candidate selection and representation has greatly expanded, with some works converging on the need for Conservative candidates to adopt a more local approach1 to campaigning and communication and others focusing on recommendations for better representation of women and ethnic minorities.2 As a result, localness and inclusiveness appear to be the main watchwords for the 2024 general election and need to be addressed in relation to the Conservative campaign. Investigating candidate selection in the run-up to the 2019 General Election, Butler et al. provided a set of hypotheses which examined not only the relevance of localness and inclusiveness in selection processes but also the timing of selection and the importance of factional control over parliamentary parties. The authors provided four noticeable results: (1) they underlined the importance of localness as the strongest predictor of selection, (2) they concluded that selectors continue to penalise women and ethnic minorities, (3) they argued that the party used ‘late selections to fast-track party insiders or correct demographic imbalances’, (4) they found no evidence that factional alignments mattered for selection success.3 However, as this special issue explores, the prospect of an electoral defeat in 2024 produced major instability for the Conservatives. Not only did they leave office after fourteen years of uninterrupted reign, but the extent of their defeat is also likely to destabilise the organisational framework and ideological stance that the party has strived to develop over this period.
4In line with Butler et al.’s findings, this article therefore seeks to examine whether or not the 2024 cohort of Conservative PPCs effectively included more women, ethnic minorities and candidates with deeper roots in the constituencies in which they stood. To do so, it examines the socio-demographic and ideological profile of 71 new candidates selected for the 2024 general election. This article also tries to understand the ideological and strategic path chosen by the Conservatives. Looking at various data (including age, gender, ethnicity and occupation), their localness and time of selection as well as potential social media positions taken by the candidates, may indicate how they envisage to position and reinvent and potentially restabilise themselves post-election.
5This article proceeds in four stages: it first assesses the evolution of organisational reforms in relation to candidate selection, then reviews academic literature to identify recent changes in the strategies adopted by the Conservative Party before applying their conclusions to the 2024 PPCs and assessing their effects on the demographic and ideological composition of the future MPs.
- 4 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès and Emmanuelle Avril, “La fabrique des députés ou l'art de sélectionner le (...)
- 5 Coller, Guillermo and Coller, Xavier, Democratizing Candidate Selection. New Methods, Old Receipts?(...)
6Focusing on election results tends to corroborate the view that the function of elections is to produce winners and losers. As a result of this functionalist trope, the importance of candidate selection has tended to be underestimated in the academic literature.4 Yet, it is an essential and often overlooked stage in the search for the ideal MP who would best represent voters and respond to the public’s wishes. Although this perception in terms of representation and responsiveness could be criticised for being too normative, candidate selection is arguably the first step towards democracy.5
- 6 For more on the Conservative Party, see Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party after Brexit. Turmoil and (...)
- 7 Mair, Peter, “Party Organizations: from civil society to the state”, in Katz, Richard and Mair, Pet (...)
- 8 Carty, Ibid.
7The Conservative Party6 has long been perceived as the ideal type of an oligarchic model centred around the leader. Until 1965, the image of the “magic circle” illustrated a structure which was entirely geared towards the emergence of a team perceived as capable of taking the reins of power. The selection of parliamentary candidates arguably reproduced this oligarchy at the local level, by creating a parliamentary elite which was demographically and socially similar to the leadership team, but hardly representative of its grassroots. Yet, the very structure of the party allowed local party associations to enjoy a degree of autonomy and, until 1998, it can be said that local party associations and headquarters maintained a fairly loose relationship, with each component retaining its own sphere of influence. This relationship has been the subject of much literature, with Peter Mair and Kenneth Carty,7 for example, referring in 1994 to the stratarchical functioning of the Conservative party, enabling the various components, i.e. local associations and Conservative Headquarters, to operate as strata, each with its own powers and prerogatives. More explicitly, Kenneth Carty referred to the “party-franchise” model, which clarifies the relationship between headquarters and local branches by comparing the latter to party franchises, whose role is indeed to disseminate and sell the Conservative “brand”, but which have a great deal of autonomy, and even operate in a semi-autarchic manner, as demonstrated in particular by their methods of selecting candidates.8
- 9 Low, Mark, “Parliamentary candidate selection in the Conservative Party: the meaning of reform for (...)
- 10 Williams, Rhys and Paun, Akash, Party People. How do - and how should – British political parties s (...)
8Until 1998, the selection of candidates was a relatively uniform process in which the central headquarters (CCHQ) and local party associations alternated and intervened equally at all stages of the process. In order to take part in the process, applicants must first appear on a “list approved” by the national management, after having undergone a series of tests such as competency interviews, psychometric, written tests or group exercises. This crucial stage is carried out by the Parliamentary Selection Board (PSB), which is modelled on the training procedure for army officers at Sandhurst Military Academy. The list drawn up following the PSB is described as “a fixed menu” from which local party associations are invited to choose.9 Each local party association may then receive around thirty approved applicants, from which a shortlist of three or four pre-selected applicants will be drawn up, following a series of interviews conducted alternately by headquarters and the local party association. The final stage (“general meeting”) then brings together all the active members of the local party association and the members of the constituency attending the meeting to elect the candidate who will become their candidate.10
9This system, which allows constituencies to enjoy relative autonomy in relation to the seat, has however produced its own side-effects, namely a clearly biased selection in favour of the same type of white, male candidate from a selective, private education system. In other words, until 1998, the lack of representativeness of Conservative candidates and the lack of diversity within the parliamentary group were seen as the result of a selection process which was too deeply rooted in the local party associations and left almost entirely in the hands of activists without any real control by CCHQ.
- 11 Kelly, Richard, ‘Organisational Reform and the Extra-Parliamentary Party’, in Garnett, Mark and Lyn (...)
10It was in this spirit that the organisational reforms introduced by the then leader William Hague in the wake of the crushing 1997 electoral defeat were carried out. The aim of these reforms was twofold: officially, to democratise the party organisation by introducing more deliberative arrangements between the leadership and the grassroots. Members were invited to participate in the election of the leader and to take a more active part in the decision-making process through more regular consultations in the form of focus groups and internal referenda. Unofficially, the aim was for CCHQ to centralise the decision-making process more effectively11. This centralisation was made possible by the introduction of new statutes unifying the organisation, which is now overseen by a Party Board with authority over all the party's components, in particular local party associations. In terms of candidate selection, however, the 1998 reforms only envisaged marginal adjustments, such as replacing the Parliamentary Selection Board with a Parliamentary Assessment Board (PAB) which provides for a recruitment method based on communication, governance and motivational skills, and modelled not on the army but on the business model. Nevertheless, one of the indirect effects of the 1998 reforms has been to increase centralisation and control over the selection of candidates, with CCHQ now almost systematically present at every stage of the procedure.
11Since 1998, the procedure for selecting candidates, justified by a desire to improve representativeness, has revealed an increasing centralisation of the party organisation. The process is structured around several stages which, until 2003 were the same for all local party associations. It remains very similar to what it was before 1998. To stand in the constituency of their choice, applicants must first be approved by CCHQ. To get on the approved list, they must first send their CVs to headquarters and then undergo a day of tests at the Parliamentary Assessment Board. At the end of this stage, around thirty “approved” candidates remain, who are then interviewed alternately by the local party association and CCHQ from the preliminary list, which is thus reduced from around thirty people to three or four applicants. These candidates are then voted on by the members at a general meeting held in the local party association.
12However, the 1998 reforms saw an increased role for CCHQ compared with the previous procedure. CCHQ are now involved at every stage of the procedure, including those stages which were previously the preserve of the local party associations: whether it is the sorting of CVs by the CCHQ Candidates' Team, the Parliamentary Assessment Board (PAB) which it organises, the interviews it conducts in parallel with the local party associations, the approval of the three or four candidates chosen by the constituency, or even the final stage where a representative of CCHQ is appointed by the local party association where there is now a CCHQ representative to scrutinise, arbitrate and control this final meeting.
13The reform produced unexpected results. Not only did the selection of candidates become even more centralised, but the problem of the under-representation of women and ethnic minorities was not solved. The 1998 reforms were quickly accused of revealing the true oligarchic nature of the organisation under the guise of democratisation, by propelling the leader to the head of a huge structure that was now unified and by allowing him to retain control over the smallest component, including the local party associations which had previously been very autonomous.
- 12 Hague, William, A Fresh Future for the Conservative Party (London, Conservative Central Office, 199 (...)
14In 2005, therefore, two measures were introduced by the newly elected party leader, David Cameron, to correct the shortcomings of the 1998 reforms: the “A-list” and open primaries. The purpose of these corrective measures was to improve the representativeness of the parliamentary group and, five years after the publication of A Fresh Future for the Conservative Party, to compensate for the increased centralisation of the party organisation12.
- 13 Hill, Michael, “Arrogant Posh Boys? The Social Composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (...)
15A parallel list - or “A-list” - was indeed offered to local branches, which now had a choice between candidates on the approved list and those on the A-list. This priority list contained around a hundred candidates, 50% of whom had to be women and a significant proportion of whom had to be ethnic minorities. However, the criteria used to place applicants on this list were highly opaque and the applicants - mainly women - whose skills were then called into question, were quickly accused of having been parachuted in by CCHQ without having to undergo selection tests.13
- 14 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “‘The Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidat (...)
- 15 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès and Emmanuelle Avril, “The use of primaries for the selection of party lea (...)
16In the same year, 2005, the first open primaries were introduced in those local party associations that requested them, allowing voters who had registered to take part in the final vote to select the candidate. The procedure thus remained the same, except that the final meeting, which had previously been reserved for members, was now open to voters. As soon as David Cameron was elected leader of the party, these innovative systems were rapidly expanded and sold by the leader as an instrument of the modernisation he intended to bring about within the party. Between 2006 and 2009, 116 primaries were organised in local branches. These were all primary meetings attended by members and registered voters. In May 2009, following the expenses scandal that month, two postal primaries were held in Totnes and Gosport to select the Conservative candidate ahead of the by-elections. Before the May 2015 general election, only 26 primaries had been held and the process, praised by David Cameron in 2010, had run out of steam and failed to make the party to be more representative or operate more democratically14. Once again, the system was rigorously controlled from the centre, as if democratisation measures - which evoke the idea of a horizontal opening towards civil society - had necessarily to be accompanied by a vertical movement of centralisation that would seek to limit their side effects. As a result, open primaries remained an experimental mechanism, doomed to failure because of their persistently low turnout, the fact that they produced results equivalent to those of traditional selection in terms of representativeness and their presumed effects on the parliamentary behaviour of the MP who emerged from a primary.15
- 16 Butler Chris, Campbell Rosie, and Hudson Jennifer, “Political Recruitment Under Pressure, Again: MP (...)
- 17 Pickles Eric, Eric Pickles’ General Election Review 2017, 19p. <https://esrcpartymembersproject.org (...)
- 18 Butler, et al. op. cit., p. 395
17As early as 2015, the system of open primaries was abandoned and the party returned to traditional candidate selection, but the period was marred by the Brexit referendum which led to two snap elections in a row. In June 2017 and December 2019, the then Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson called early elections in very different circumstances but with the common aim of consolidating their parliamentary majority and strengthening their authority. These decisions had an impact on the overall timetable of the candidate selection procedure - which had therefore to be significantly accelerated - and as a result on the profile of the candidates selected. In addition, this accelerated procedure contributed to antagonising local party associations which felt that they had been bypassed. In 2017, CCHQ used Part IV, clause 17, of the party constitution to introduce special selection rules in order to allow the Conservative Party Board to select 300 candidates within three weeks. The traditional stage of the Parliamentary Assessment Board which lasted a whole day was thus replaced with a 45-minute interview and local associations were thus offered a choice of three candidates.16 The perception that some of these candidates had been parachuted in by CCHQ prompted the party to review the rules in the prospect of the next election. Eric Pickles who was in charge of this review recommended very early selections, arguing that candidates should be in their seats by June 2018 in the prospect of the next General Election which was due on 5 May 2022.17 But due to Boris Johnson’s decision to call another snap election, the same special rules were applied to the 2019 general election and once again local party associations blamed CCHQ for excessive centralisation and a lack of transparency. However, this centralisation may have helped the party to select more diverse candidates in winnable seats.18 The continuing need to diversify the parliamentary composition of the party having to coincide with the tight timetable of the campaign, the party leadership devised strategies, via increased centralisation from CCHQ, to select candidates with specific profiles in safe seats, which they were likely to win.
- 19 Goodman Paul, “The first real overhaul of the candidate selection process since 2002”, Conservative (...)
- 20 Jennifer Powers, “Whatever the election result, CCHQ must overhaul the candidate selection process” (...)
- 21 Powers, Ibid.
18In the aftermath of the 2024 election defeat, a new review of candidate selection was scheduled and described as the “first real overhaul of the candidate selection process since 2002”,19 including an assessment of PPCs’ communication skills and psychometric tests. As one of them explained, “candidates were evaluated on various criteria, such as resilience and communication skills in online tests and in-person activities. Perversely, there was no assessment of political views.”20 In addition, many candidates also claimed that they had not been properly informed by CCHQ of the deadlines and that this lack of communication “caused intense mental anguish to many, and profound mental health impacts for some.”21
19Over the past thirty years, research on candidate selection has developed in three directions: the importance of candidate selection in determining the face and colour of political parties, the challenges of representation and finally, the need for diversity and inclusiveness in order to ensure better representation of voters, with the overall aim of explaining and improving representation.
- 22 Hazan and Rahat, op. cit., p. 3.
- 23 Norris, Pippa and Lovenduski, Joni, Political recruitment: Gender, Class and Race in the British Pa (...)
- 24 Allen, Peter, The Political Class. Why it matters who our politicians are (Oxford, Oxford Universit (...)
- 25 Sobolewska, Maria, McKee Rebecca and Campbell, Rosie, “Explaining motivation to represent: how does (...)
- 26 Saalfeld, Thomas and Bischof, Daniel (2013), “Minority-Ethnic MPs and the Substantive Representatio (...)
20While a consensus has been reached among scholars to acknowledge the importance of candidate selection which “influences the balance of power within the party, determines the personal composition of parliaments, and impacts on the behavior of legislators”,22 the second direction taken by academic literature has widely discussed the challenges faced by political parties in trying to maximise representation. These challenges are twofold, based on the one hand on the drivers of representation and on the other hand on the nature of representation. In their seminal work, Norris and Lovenduski provided a framework for analysing the drivers of representation through the lens of candidate selection as a two-way process which is based on both demand (the selectors) and supply (the selected).23 The authors thus analysed the motivations of the party selectors (demand) and the minorities selected (supply) as sometimes incompatible and therefore challenging. They found out that on the demand-side, a party’s willingness to change its image often prevailed, while on the supply-side the motivations of candidates are varied, oscillating between descriptive – referring to “the presence of certain types of people in given places or institutions’ - and substantive representation - referring to ‘the representation of the political interests, broadly defined, of different groups of society”24 - but ultimately falling into three categories: shared experience, motivation to represent and electoral incentives.25 Descriptive representation presupposes that female or BAME (Black and Asian Minority Ethnic) MPs can/should only represent women or ethnic minority voters whereas substantive representation is based on the sole representation of views, ideas and political interests. That being said, literature is ambivalent about whether the increasing descriptive representation matters for the substantive representation of minorities, while showing that in the UK there are strong electoral incentives for substantive representation.26
- 27 Gauja, Anika, “The ‘Push’ for Primaries: What Drives Party Organisational Reforms in Australia and (...)
- 28 Sobolewska, Maria, “Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: the 2 (...)
21In recent years, research about candidate selection has focused on better representation of these under-represented social groups, namely women and ethnic minorities. While Norris and Lovenduski argued, back in the 1990s, that the under-representation of women and ethnic minorities was not substantiated by any evidence of discrimination and could be more easily justified by “supply-side factors”, i.e. a limited choice of candidates in the first place, Gauja later explained that the party debate on representativeness27 especially of women and ethnic minorities should be understood from a demand-side perspective. The case of the British Conservative Party largely confirms Gauja’s contention. Since 2005, the party’s response to under-representation has come from successive organisational reforms, from the A-list to open primaries which, as shown in the previous section, had unintended consequences in terms of representation. In contrast to the Labour Party, literature about the recruitment of BAME candidates in the Conservative Party has indeed shown that the procedure does not follow the expected pattern of ethnic minority MPs being selected in “non-white” seats and elected by ethnic minority voters. More than half were said to have been selected in unwinnable seats.28
- 29 Celis, Karen, “On Substantive Representation, Diversity and Responsiveness”, Politics & Gender 8: 4 (...)
- 30 Collignon, Sonia, “Addressing Barriers to Women's Representation in Party Candidate Selections”, Th (...)
- 31 Harmer, Emily and Southern Rosalynd, “‘Girly Swots’ and the Most Diverse Parliament Ever: Women’s R (...)
- 32 Hussain, Farah, “Enduring inequalities in British politics: Muslim women in the Labour Party”, Parl (...)
- 33 Sobolewska, Maria, op. cit. (2013), pp. 615-633. Sobolewska, Maria, McKee Rebecca and Campbell, Ros (...)
- 34 English, Patrick, “Visible, Elected, but Effectively Nominal: Visibility as a Barrier Maintaining t (...)
- 35 Cowley, Philip et al. op. cit.; Milazzo, Caitlin, Townsley, Joshua, “Conceived in Harlesden: Candid (...)
- 36 Butler et al. op. cit.
22Since 2019, works on candidate selection have mushroomed and focused essentially on the need for diversity and fair representation in terms of gender and race but also the need for territorial proximity with voters through localness. The issue of gender in party representation has been largely explored with scholars like Celis, Childs, Campbell and Hudson29 taking a closer interest in candidate selection, or Collignon relating it to discrimination and harassment.30 In the aftermath of the 2019 general election, even more scholars have taken an interest in the question of female representation alone,31 sometimes in the way issues of gender, religion and class intersect.32 In parallel, the question of ethnic representation has generated continued interest among specialists such as Sobolewska33 but also renewed research since the 2019 election.34 In the context of this election, there have been several publications about the argument of localism among candidates especially in the Conservative Party.35 Butler, et al. elaborated on the importance of localness, arguing that local residence had become a key factor which is likely to last and predicting that the selection of white male candidates in winnable seats and with no explicit support from any predominant faction was a phenomenon that was likely to be repeated. In considering the socio-demographic profile of Conservative PPCs in the run-up to the 2024 general election, Butler et al.’s findings combining gender, race, residence and selection timing, will prove all-encompassing and essential.36
- 37 Tim Bale and David Jeffery, “Annihilation in the red wall, an exit for a top leadership contender a (...)
- 38 Penna Dominic and Riley-Smith Ben, “Tories abandon ‘unwinnable’ northern seats to target south”, Th (...)
- 39 Butler, et al., op. cit.
- 40 Atkinson William, “Sunak’s survivors. Conservative candidates show an obvious trend towards localis (...)
- 41 https://x.com/tomorrowsmps
- 42 Interview with Michael Crick, 23 January 2025.
23As we have seen, the main goal of both main political parties, as is also the case in many other countries, has been to make them appear “less pale, stale and male”. Diversity and inclusiveness having been key strategies of candidate selection, the Conservative party’s procedure in 2024 was expected to follow this trend. However, media surveys conducted in the run-up to the 2024 general election indicated that the party’s strategy went in two directions necessitated by the urgency of the procedure. The first trend was not only to target safe seats but to return to traditional party strongholds by renouncing previous strategies which had been devised under exceptional circumstances. The future of the “Red Wall” of traditionally Labour northern constituencies, as a new Conservative heartland following the 2019 general election, was widely debated with most arguments in favour of giving up what had merely been a post-Brexit tactic to consolidate support for Boris Johnson.37 Another survey conducted by the Telegraph indicated that the party’s strategy was to give up the red wall in the North of England and target the traditional south.38 The second trend confirmed the hypothesis of localness proposed by Butler et al.39 Through ConservativeHome, Atkinson assessed the profile of 112 Conservative candidates and found out that a majority of them had strong local roots and previous professional experience in the party as councillors, spin doctors of members of CCHQ staff. 40The most visible research project about candidate selection was carried out by the famous journalist and broadcaster Michael Crick who launched a Twitter account in 2022, Tomorrow’s MPs,41 which monitored candidate selection procedures in all the 650 constituencies and observed that “the overwhelming trend for all the parties was that candidates had to be more local than ever”, adding his own personal comment: “I think that is very damaging because it reduces choice and makes it difficult for talented people to be chosen.”42
- 43 Butler, et al., op. cit.
24The survey I conducted with two Master’s students, Anaïs Coquet and Rémi Jean, produced similar results. We focused on two pools of Conservative candidates: new candidates and candidates selected in target seats, the latter operating as a control group for the sake of comparison. Then after the election, we narrowed down our scope to those eventually elected among our new candidates in order to assess the extent to which their electoral performance matched the party’s strategies and expectations. Our findings first provided some basic socio-demographic information and included some of their stances through statements in the media and social media, where available. However, these statements proved insufficient to identify the ideological profile of these newly elected Conservative MPs and further information would be needed. In the course of this research, we found, in line with Butler et al.’s findings, that the timing of selection had to be taken into account. Indeed, when Rishi Sunak announced on 31 May 2024 that Parliament would be dissolved for a new election to be held on 4 July 2024, 75 Conservatives MPs had already stood down out of 132 altogether, and 183 candidates had yet to be selected due to changing electoral boundaries. Nominations were due to be closed on 7 June at 16.00 BST but the few days between 31 May and 7 June turned out to be more and more critical as selection progressed, with a large number of late selections required by the election countdown. With early selections, it was easier for the party CCHQ and local party associations to provide well-trained candidates who had had time to prepare and campaign for their selection, in accordance with the pool of candidates available (supply). With late selections, the risk of CCHQ centralising the procedure and parachuting in candidates who have no close connection with the constituencies concerned but who have a good command of the skills required and fit the party’s needs (demand), was understandably higher. Presumably in the latter case, the aim of gender and ethnic diversity would be more easily reached by CCHQ than localism, which led Butler et al. to argue that the timing of selection is indeed a significant parameter, based on the presumption that late selections were expected to fit the party’s aims of diversity.43
25Taken together, these observations allowed us to formulate a number of interrelated and correlated hypotheses: the number of BAME and female candidate selections was meant to be higher, the number of candidates with local connections was likely to be higher, both hypotheses being in line with the academic literature. We also hypothesised that the above data were likely to change depending on the timing of candidate selection. Although the data of gender, race and age were unquestionable, the criterion of localism was more difficult to identify. As Butler and al. rightly asked: “is a candidate who lived in a constituency for part of their childhood more local than one who has lived in an otherwise similar constituency 20 miles away their whole life?” Like these authors, we chose to retain the status of local councillors as an imperfect but readily observable measure of localism.
- 44 Although there were 75 Conservative MPs standing down when nominations closed, this figure did not (...)
26In our key group, we identified 71 new PPCs44, who had never been MPs for the constituency in which they stood. However, the notion of “newness” should be nuanced as this group also included people not only former unsuccessful candidates but also former MPs who stood for another constituency. In this group we found 24 women (33.8%), only 7 candidates from Black and Asian ethnic backgrounds (9.8%) and 42 local councillors (59%). In the second group, which we used as a control group, we focused on the 47 most targeted seats and found 12 women (25.5%), 4 candidates from Black and Asian ethnic backgrounds (8.5%), 20 former local councillors (42.5%), 3 former MPs and 1 former Member of the Scottish Parliament.
- 45 Cracknell, Richard and Baker, Carl, General Election 2024: Results and Analysis, Research Briefing (...)
27As we know, Labour was elected with a landslide majority leaving the Conservatives with only 121 Conservative MPs, including many former MPs. As shown in table 1, the Conservative Parliamentary Party elected in July 2024 includes 26 newly elected MPs, of whom 8 are women, i.e. 21.4% compared with 24% for the whole party, placing the Conservatives well below the other parties in terms of female representation (46% in the LP and 44% in the LD45) and 3 are BAME (11.5% BAME, which is the same proportion for the party as a whole, i.e. 14 MPs). According to the information available, these new MPs are aged between 30 and 56 with a majority in their early forties and a significant number (6 MPs) in law-and-order professions (military or police). It is also interesting to note that 80.7% of them (21 MPs) were elected with large majorities of over 1,000 votes, 15 of them in winnable seats already held by their party. It should be noted that due to changing electoral boundaries, many constituencies were newly established or re-established differently. 13 MPs had been selected early (before 31 May), and 13 later that what the official procedure would have required (between 31 May and 7 June).
Table 1 – The new Conservative MPs’ socio-demographic data
- 46 Police Commissioner
- 47 Ex-MEP, 2009-2019
- 48 British Army
- 49 Downing street adviser
- 50 Ex-Yorkshire army regiment
- 51 Ex-beauty queen
- 52 Ex-Royal Marines
- 53 Royal Army Medical Corps
- 54 Police Commissioner
- 55 Senior fellow at Centre for Social Justice
- 56 Ex-adviser to PM Theresa May and senior fellow at Policy Exchange
|
Name
|
Gender
|
Race
|
Age (in 2024)
|
Party of former MP
|
Constituency
|
Majority
|
Former local Councillor
|
Early/late selection
|
|
BRANDRETH Aphra
|
F
|
W
|
45
|
Con
|
Eddisbury
|
3,056
|
x
|
E
|
|
BEDFORD Peter
|
M
|
Indian-British
|
38
|
N/A
|
Mid Leicestershire
|
2,201
|
x
|
L
|
|
BOOL Sarah
|
F
|
W
|
N/A
|
Con
|
South Northamptonshire
|
3 ,687
|
|
L
|
|
COCKING46 Lewis
|
M
|
W
|
32
|
Con
|
Broxbourne
|
2,858
|
x
|
E
|
|
COOPER John
|
M
|
W
|
N /A
|
Con
|
Dumfries and Galloway
|
930
|
|
E
|
|
CROSS Harriet
|
F
|
W
|
34
|
SNP
|
Gordon and Buchan (target seat)
|
878
|
|
L
|
|
DEWHIRST Charlie
|
M
|
W
|
44
|
Con
|
East Yorkshire
|
3,125
|
x
|
E
|
|
FORTUNE Peter
|
M
|
W
|
|
Con
|
Bromley and Chislehurst
|
302
|
x
|
E
|
|
FOX Ashley47
|
M
|
W
|
55
|
N/A
|
Bridgwater
|
1,349
|
x
|
L
|
|
GRIFFITHS Alison
|
F
|
W
|
N/A
|
Con
|
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
|
1,765
|
|
E
|
|
JOPP Lincoln48
|
M
|
W
|
56
|
Con
|
Spelthorne
|
1,590
|
|
E
|
|
LAM Katie49
|
F
|
W
|
33
|
N/A
|
Weald of Kent
|
8,422
|
|
L
|
|
OBESE-JECTY50 Ben
|
M
|
Black
|
45
|
Con
|
Huntingdon
|
1,499
|
|
E
|
|
PAUL Rebecca
|
F
|
W
|
N/A
|
Con
|
Reigate
|
3,187
|
x
|
E
|
|
RAJA Shivani51
|
F
|
Indian
|
30
|
Ind
|
Leicester East
|
4,426
|
|
L
|
|
RANKIN Jack
|
M
|
W
|
32
|
Con
|
Windsor
|
6,457
|
x
|
E
|
|
REED David52
|
M
|
W
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
Exmouth and Exeter East
|
121
|
|
L
|
|
ROBERTSON Joe
|
M
|
W
|
40
|
N/A
|
Isle of Wight East
|
3,323
|
x
|
L
|
|
SHASTRI-HURST Neil53
|
M
|
Indian
|
40
|
N/A
|
Solihull West and Shirley
|
4,620
|
|
L
|
|
SMITH Rebecca
|
F
|
W
|
N/A
|
Con
|
South West Devon
|
2,112
|
x
|
E
|
|
SNOWDEN54 Andrew
|
M
|
W
|
40
|
Con
|
Fylde
|
561
|
|
L
|
|
SPENCER55 Patrick
|
M
|
W
|
N/A
|
Con/
Lab April 2024)
|
Suffolk and North Ipswich
|
4,290
|
|
L
|
|
STAFFORD Gregory
|
M
|
W
|
42
|
N/A
|
Farnham and Bordon
|
1,349
|
x
|
L
|
|
STEPHENSON Blake
|
M
|
W
|
N/A
|
Lab
|
Mid Bedfordshire
|
1,321
|
x
|
L
|
|
TIMOTHY Nick56
|
M
|
W
|
44
|
Ind
|
West Suffolk
|
3,247
|
|
E
|
|
THOMAS Bradley
|
M
|
W
|
38
|
Con
|
Bromsgrove
|
3,016
|
x
|
E
|
- 57 Butler, et al., op. cit.
28In their 2019 General Election survey, Butler et al. found support for their original hypotheses that those who had worked for the party and those from more marginalised groups (women, BAME candidates, LGBT and people with disabilities) were more likely to be shortlisted closer to the election, but they found no support for their expectations that more candidates from traditional occupation pathways into politics or who were not locally resident would be more likely to be shortlisted closer to the election.57 Our 2024 survey led to similar conclusions in terms of race but not in terms of gender. Indeed, among the 13 MPs selected late, we found 4 women but all the 3 BAME MPs. However, in contrast to their conclusions about the 2019 General election, our survey supported Butler et al.’s original hypothesis that candidates who are not local residents (i.e. not local councillors) are more likely to be selected closer to the election, as we also found 13 local councillors, 8 of whom were selected early and 5 late. Some of the early-selected local councillors strongly advertised their local roots, as Rebecca Smith did on her webpage: “I was born, raised, live and work here”. Even though this figure is not significant, their higher proportion among MPs who had been selected early, combined with the high proportion of local councillors among new candidates overall (59%), at least signals the party’s intention to choose more local new candidates. Among the 9 candidates selected late but who were not local councillors, we found 3 local celebrities with more visible profiles on social media (one member of the armed forces, Mark Reed; one police commissioner, Andrew Snowden and a former beauty queen, Shivani Raja) and two senior party advisers or officials (Katie Lam, a former Downing Street adviser and Patrick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Centre for Social Justice who also worked for the Department for Education). In total, this cohort of 26 newly elected MPs reveals interesting personalities and corroborates a never-fading trend towards celebrity politics. Other examples include Nick Timothy who was the former adviser to Theresa May who was blamed for the ill-advised decision to hold a snap election in June 2017 which reduced the party’s parliamentary majority to 317 (against 330 in 2015). Aphra Brandreth is the daughter of ex-Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth and an Honorary Vice-President of the Conservative Women’s Association, while Patrick Spencer is the son of the British billionaire philanthropist, Baron Spencer of Alresford, sometimes known as “Spence”.
- 58 Trumm, Siim, Milazzo, Caitlin and Duggan, Alan “Parliamentary candidates and their campaign message (...)
29In looking at ideological stances and factional alignment, we lacked the time and resources to investigate this hypothesis as thoroughly as we would have liked. However, we did monitor all candidates’ X (formerly Twitter) accounts during the official campaign and found that very few of them openly commented on current debates. Controversial issues were even carefully avoided with the notable exception of Jack Rankin who held strong anti-transgender and anti-immigration views. However, social media accounts were full of messages about personal stories including football matches, pub nights, recipes and anecdotes about family life. Although the personalisation of local campaigning is generally limited58, the main views expressed on social media were about local bread-and-butter issues. Arguably, this general silence – or inhibition - looked like the result of party instructions exhorting candidates to keep a low profile or focus on local bread-and better issues.
- 59 David Jeffery, “Who’s left? The composition of the new parliamentary Conservative Party”, UK in a C (...)
30Further investigation into the ideological profile of new Conservative MPs would be required but a preliminary survey conducted by David Jeffery confirms this observation. Examining the ideological composition of the new parliamentary cohort, he found very little change from the previous make-up of the group, with no dominant single faction emerging from the variety of ideological backgrounds of the 2024 Conservative MPs.59
31In the past decades, general elections have led to increasing diversity in the House of Commons. In the wake of organisational reforms introduced by David Cameron in 2005, especially in the field of candidate selection, this trend has been particularly visible in the Conservative Party and, post-Brexit, has contributed to producing the most diverse Cabinets ever appointed, under the Premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. The election of a Conservative Prime Minister of Indian origin, Rishi Sunak, can be fairly interpreted as the logical outcome of an ongoing move towards greater diversity in the parliamentary party.
32However, the 2024 general election has produced counter-intuitive results, with the Conservative Party appearing as less diverse than most of the others, one explanation residing in its crushing defeat compared to Labour’s performance and the loss of hundreds of seats.
33In this survey, our findings confirmed Butler et al.’s predictions for the 2019 general election, showing that more women but fewer BAME candidates were selected, with both groups penalised overall by party selectors. We also observed that local residence remains the best predictor of electoral success and that the timing of selection makes a difference. Combined with constituency-level vote shares, our findings confirm their main conclusion that the Conservatives overwhelmingly shortlist white or male candidates in winnable seats.
- 60 Interview of Michael Crick, 23 January 2025.
- 61 Saini, Rima, Bankole, Michael, & Begum, Neema, “The 2022 Conservative leadership campaign and post- (...)
- 62 See Peter Dorey on the increased “Thatcherisation” of the Conservative Party in Dorey, Peter “Thing (...)
34However, we have also found that Conservative candidates have considerably toned down their ideological preferences and that if newly elected Conservative MPs happen to be more pale, more male and more local, they have also proved to be less vocal, at least on social media. This could signal a return to a more traditional and more moderate parliamentary party, at least potentially more willing to keep a low profile and blend into the masses. As Michael Crick argued, “the party is now reduced to its hard core.”60 The recent rise of BAME Conservative figures such as Priti Patel or Suella Braverman, and to a lesser extent Rishi Sunak, who have stood out for holding more authoritarian views than their white counterparts, has confirmed the view that diverse Conservative candidates are generally more right-wing.61 With the election of Kemi Badenoch, a woman of Nigerian origin with socially conservative views on trans-identity and immigration as its new leader, the Conservative Party, now reduced to its bare bones, may finally be more centrist than some scholars have suggested,62 with its MPs actually concealed behind an unrepresentative leader whose image as a Black Woman serves as a window-dressing for the party leadership’s leap to the right. Taken together, these features paint the picture of a small Conservative parliamentary party elected in 2024 as a kaleidoscopic symbol of divided identities. With no ideological realignment in sight, this could be clear evidence of increased instability for the party in opposition. At the parliamentary level, however, a return to its hard core may well restabilise the party around its ideological traditions and socio-demographic origins.
Top of page
Bibliography
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Powers, Jennifer, ‘Whatever the election result, CCHQ must overhaul the candidate selection process’, ConservativeHome, 26 June 2024, <https://conservativehome.com/2024/06/26/jennifer-powers-whatever-the-election-result-cchq-must-overhaul-the-candidate-selection-process/>
Saalfeld, Thomas and Bischof, Daniel, ‘Minority-Ethnic MPs and the Substantive Representation of Minority Interests in the House of Commons, 2005-2011’, Parliamentary Affairs, 66, 2013, pp. 305-328.
Saini, Rima, Bankole, Michael and Begum, Neema, ‘The 2022 Conservative leadership campaign and post-racial gatekeeping, Race & Class 65: 2, 2023, pp. 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231164599
Sobolewska, Maria, ‘Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: the 2010 British General Election’, West European Politics 36: 2, 2013, pp. 615-633.
Sobolewska, Maria, McKee Rebecca and Campbell, Rosie, ‘Explaining motivation to represent: how does descriptive representation lead to substantive representation of racial and ethnic minorities?’, West European Politics 41: 6, 2018, pp. 1237-1261.
Trumm, Siim, Milazzo, Caitlin and Duggan, Alan ‘Parliamentary candidates and their campaign messages at the 2019 General Election’, Politics 45: 2, 2023, pp. 314-330. https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231186384
Wäckerle, Jens, ‘Parity or patriarchy? The nomination of female candidates in British politics’, Party Politics 28: 1, 2002, pp. 10-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068820977242
Williams, Rhys and Paun, Akash, Party People. How do - and how should – British political parties select their parliamentary candidates (London, Institute for Government, 2011) http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Party%20People.pdf
Top of page
Notes
Butler, Chris, Miori, Marta and Ford, Robert, “Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241270519; Cowley, Philip, Gandy, Robert J., & Foster, Scott, “Increasingly local: the regional roots of British Members of Parliament, 2010–2019”, The Journal of Legislative Studies 30: 3, 2022, pp. 253–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2022.2088178
Harmer, Emily and Southern Rosalynd, “‘Girly Swots’ and the Most Diverse Parliament Ever: Women’s Representation, Voters and Issues in the 2019 Election Campaign”, in Tonge, Jonathan, Wilks-Heeg, Stuart and Thompson, Louise (eds.), Britain Votes: The 2019 General Election (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020); Saini, Rima, Bankole, Michael and Begum, Neema, “The 2022 Conservative leadership campaign and post-racial gatekeeping”, Race & Class 65: 2, 2023, pp. 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231164599; Wäckerle, Jens, “Parity or patriarchy? The nomination of female candidates in British politics”, Party Politics 28: 1, 2002, pp. 10-23, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068820977242
Butler, et al., op. cit.
Alexandre-Collier, Agnès and Emmanuelle Avril, “La fabrique des députés ou l'art de sélectionner les candidats travaillistes et conservateurs aux élections législatives de 2015”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique XX: 3, 2015, https://rfcb.revues.org/540; Hazan, Reuven Y. & Rahat, Gideon, Democracies within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and their Political Consequences (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010).
Coller, Guillermo and Coller, Xavier, Democratizing Candidate Selection. New Methods, Old Receipts? (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2018).
For more on the Conservative Party, see Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party after Brexit. Turmoil and Transformation (Cambridge, Polity, 2023).
Mair, Peter, “Party Organizations: from civil society to the state”, in Katz, Richard and Mair, Peter (eds.), How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies (London, Sage, 1994), pp. 1-22; Carty, R. Kenneth, ‘Parties as Franchise Systems: The Stratarchical Organizational Imperative’, Party Politics 1, 2004, pp. 5-24.
Carty, Ibid.
Low, Mark, “Parliamentary candidate selection in the Conservative Party: the meaning of reform for party members and membership parties”, British Politics 9: 4, 2014, pp. 401-429.
Williams, Rhys and Paun, Akash, Party People. How do - and how should – British political parties select their parliamentary candidates (London, Institute for Government, 2011) http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Party%20People.pdf
Kelly, Richard, ‘Organisational Reform and the Extra-Parliamentary Party’, in Garnett, Mark and Lynch, Philip (Eds), The Conservatives in Crisis. The Tories after 1997 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 82-106.
Hague, William, A Fresh Future for the Conservative Party (London, Conservative Central Office, 1997)
Hill, Michael, “Arrogant Posh Boys? The Social Composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party and the Effects of Cameron's A-list”, The Political Quarterly 84: 1, 2013, pp. 80-89.
Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “‘The Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18: 3, 2016, pp. 706-723.
Alexandre-Collier, Agnès and Emmanuelle Avril, “The use of primaries for the selection of party leaders in the UK Conservative and Labour parties: formal rules and ideological congruence”, in Sandri, Giulia and Seddone, Antonella (eds), New Paths for Selecting Political Elites. Investigating the Impact of Inclusive Candidate and Party Leader Selection Methods (London, Routledge, 2021), pp. 160-179.
Butler Chris, Campbell Rosie, and Hudson Jennifer, “Political Recruitment Under Pressure, Again: MPs and Candidates in the 2019 General Election”, in Ford, Robert, Bale, Tim, Jennings, Will and Surridge, Paula, The British General Election of 2019 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 394.
Pickles Eric, Eric Pickles’ General Election Review 2017, 19p. <https://esrcpartymembersproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/tory2017_ge-review-document.pdf>
Butler, et al. op. cit., p. 395
Goodman Paul, “The first real overhaul of the candidate selection process since 2002”, ConservativeHome, 27 October 2020, <https://conservativehome.com/2020/10/27/the-first-real-overhaul-of-the-candidate-selection-process-since-2002/>
Jennifer Powers, “Whatever the election result, CCHQ must overhaul the candidate selection process”, ConservativeHome, 26 June 2024, <https://conservativehome.com/2024/06/26/jennifer-powers-whatever-the-election-result-cchq-must-overhaul-the-candidate-selection-process/>
Powers, Ibid.
Hazan and Rahat, op. cit., p. 3.
Norris, Pippa and Lovenduski, Joni, Political recruitment: Gender, Class and Race in the British Parliament (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1995).
Allen, Peter, The Political Class. Why it matters who our politicians are (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018); Pitkin, Hanna, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969).
Sobolewska, Maria, McKee Rebecca and Campbell, Rosie, “Explaining motivation to represent: how does descriptive representation lead to substantive representation of racial and ethnic minorities?”, West European Politics, 41: 6, 2018, pp. 1237-1261.
Saalfeld, Thomas and Bischof, Daniel (2013), “Minority-Ethnic MPs and the Substantive Representation of Minority Interests in the House of Commons, 2005-2011”, Parliamentary Affairs 66, 2013, pp. 305-328.
Gauja, Anika, “The ‘Push’ for Primaries: What Drives Party Organisational Reforms in Australia and the United Kingdom?”, Australian Journal of Political Science 47: 4, 2012, p. 653.
Sobolewska, Maria, “Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: the 2010 British General Election”, West European Politics 36: 2, 2013, pp. 615-633.
Celis, Karen, “On Substantive Representation, Diversity and Responsiveness”, Politics & Gender 8: 4, 2012, pp. 524-529, Childs, Sarah and Webb, Paul, Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Collignon, Sonia, “Addressing Barriers to Women's Representation in Party Candidate Selections”, The Political Quarterly 95, 2024, pp. 363-367. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13397; see also Alexandre-Collier, Agnès and Drolet, Michael, “Women and the Politics of Incivility and Discrimination: Introduction”, The Political Quarterly 93, 2022, pp. 8-16, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13074
Harmer, Emily and Southern Rosalynd, “‘Girly Swots’ and the Most Diverse Parliament Ever: Women’s Representation, Voters and Issues in the 2019 Election Campaign”, in Tonge, Jonathan, Wilks-Heeg, Stuart and Thompson, Louise (eds.), Britain Votes: The 2019 General Election (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020); Wäckerle, Jens, “Parity or patriarchy? The nomination of female candidates in British politics”, Party Politics 28: 1, 2002, pp. 10-23, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068820977242
Hussain, Farah, “Enduring inequalities in British politics: Muslim women in the Labour Party”, Parliamentary Affairs 77: 4, 2024, pp. 713–734, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsae025 ; Murray, Rainbow, “It’s a rich man’s world: How class and glass ceilings intersect for UK parliamentary candidates”, International Political Science Review 44: 1, 2023, pp. 13-26, https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211040025
Sobolewska, Maria, op. cit. (2013), pp. 615-633. Sobolewska, Maria, McKee Rebecca and Campbell, Rosie, “Explaining motivation to represent: how does descriptive representation lead to substantive representation of racial and ethnic minorities?”, West European Politics 41: 6, 2018, pp. 1237-1261.
English, Patrick, “Visible, Elected, but Effectively Nominal: Visibility as a Barrier Maintaining the Political Underrepresentation of Britain’s Immigrant Origin Communities”, Parliamentary Affairs 72: 3, 2019, pp. 542–560, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsy022; English, Patrick, “High rejection, low selection: How ‘punitive parties’ shape ethnic minority representation”, Party Politics 28: 2, 2022, pp. 294-305, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068820973851
Cowley, Philip et al. op. cit.; Milazzo, Caitlin, Townsley, Joshua, “Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections”, Parliamentary Affairs 73: 1, 2020, pp. 127–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsy040
Butler et al. op. cit.
Tim Bale and David Jeffery, “Annihilation in the red wall, an exit for a top leadership contender and a parliamentary party stuffed with southerners and Oxbridgers – how losing the next election could shape the Conservatives”, The Conversation, 31 May 2023, https://theconversation.com/annihilation-in-the-red-wall-an-exit-for-a-top-leadership-contender-and-a-parliamentary-party-stuffed-with-southerners-and-oxbridgers-how-losing-the-next-election-could-shape-the-conservatives-206652
Penna Dominic and Riley-Smith Ben, “Tories abandon ‘unwinnable’ northern seats to target south”, The Telegraph, 20 June 2024, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/20/general-election-tories-northern-seats-unwinnable-target/>
Butler, et al., op. cit.
Atkinson William, “Sunak’s survivors. Conservative candidates show an obvious trend towards localism – and towards politicos”, ConservativeHome, 21 June 2024, <https://conservativehome.com/2024/06/21/sunaks-survivors-conservative-candidates-show-an-obvious-trend-towards-localism-and-towards-politicos/>
https://x.com/tomorrowsmps
Interview with Michael Crick, 23 January 2025.
Butler, et al., op. cit.
Although there were 75 Conservative MPs standing down when nominations closed, this figure did not mean that 75 new candidates would be selected, as electoral boundaries changed considerably in the run-up to the 2024 general election. In addition, other Conservative MPs stood as independent which added to the confusion. With these factors combined, we only had time to observe the cases of 71 new Prospective Parliamentary Conservative Candidates.
Cracknell, Richard and Baker, Carl, General Election 2024: Results and Analysis, Research Briefing (House of Commons Library, 2024), p. 43.
Police Commissioner
Ex-MEP, 2009-2019
British Army
Downing street adviser
Ex-Yorkshire army regiment
Ex-beauty queen
Ex-Royal Marines
Royal Army Medical Corps
Police Commissioner
Senior fellow at Centre for Social Justice
Ex-adviser to PM Theresa May and senior fellow at Policy Exchange
Butler, et al., op. cit.
Trumm, Siim, Milazzo, Caitlin and Duggan, Alan “Parliamentary candidates and their campaign messages at the 2019 General Election”, Politics 45: 2, 2023, pp. 314-330. https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231186384
David Jeffery, “Who’s left? The composition of the new parliamentary Conservative Party”, UK in a Changing Europe, 17 July 2024, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/whos-left-the-composition-of-the-new-parliamentary-conservative-party
Interview of Michael Crick, 23 January 2025.
Saini, Rima, Bankole, Michael, & Begum, Neema, “The 2022 Conservative leadership campaign and post-racial gatekeeping”, Race & Class 65: 2, 2023, pp. 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231164599
Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “Rishi Sunak premier ministre : la « diversité » toute relative du gouvernement britannique”, The Conversation, 13 septembre, 2022, https://theconversation.com/rishi-sunak-premier-ministre-la-diversite-toute-relative-du-gouvernement-britannique-190261
See Peter Dorey on the increased “Thatcherisation” of the Conservative Party in Dorey, Peter “Things Fall Apart, the Centre-Right Cannot Hold: the crises of British Conservatism since 1990”, British Politics, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-025-00277-6
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