When the rumours started that Ed Balls was eyeing a comeback as an MP, the reaction from most people in Westminster was “why would he bother doing that?” Labour’s former shadow chancellor has forged a fun career for himself since unexpectedly losing his Morley and Outwood seat in 2015; enjoying the Strictly Come Dancing limelight, writing a cookery book and presenting documentaries. He has looked visibly happier and healthier since losing his seat. Why on earth would he come back to being an MP, with all the misery that entails?
The answer in Balls’ case is probably the same as it is for many in politics: it’s an addiction. That’s why politicians are happy to put up with a dysfunctional parliamentary culture, the weird working hours (and weird colleagues) and people generally disliking them. His wife, Yvette Cooper, is still a Labour MP and flying high in the party, so it won’t be a surprise to Balls if life hasn’t really improved since he was last on the green benches. In many ways it has got worse, to the extent that only addicts will find the life attractive, while outsiders, who might still make very good legislators, stay well away.
Members of the public repeatedly tell pollsters that they’d be interested in becoming an MP (the latest poll, from YouGov in February of this year, puts the proportion at 21%). But on the basis of the sort of people who end up actually becoming MPs, I wonder whether this poll is similar to those showing that one in eight men think they’d probably win a point in a tennis match against Serena Williams, in that it doesn’t bear much relation to what would really happen. In these polls about whether they’d like to stand for parliament, people then make it very clear they’ve noticed the downsides of the job that would put them off: online abuse and the impact on their family tend to be the reasons most cite for not wanting to enter parliament.
When I interviewed MPs who were standing down at the 2019 election, they also mentioned these as factors in their decisions to quit, often after a reasonably short time in office. Of the 74 MPs who stood down, 21 did so after just nine or fewer years in office. Women were far more likely to leave early than men: 52% of women leaving had served nine years or fewer, with just 25% of men doing the same. Some said they’d always imagined just being in the Commons for a decade. Others had burned out in a way they hadn’t expected, thanks to the pressures of combining life in parliament, a constituency and fitting a family in between. Threats and abuse just made that balance seem less justifiable.
This month, senior Labour MP Chris Bryant warned that the reputation of parliament itself is being tarnished by the behaviour of some of its occupants. He worries that MPs are in so much danger (two members have been murdered in the past six years and others are wearing stab vests for their own protection) that the reputation of parliament is all the more precious. After Sir David Amess’s murder, a number of members stopped holding face-to-face constituency surgeries because their family members had begged them to, fearful that they might be next. Even before Amess’s death, personal safety drove many members to wonder if this job really was worth it. It was certainly a key factor for many of those who decided to quit early.
The 10-year MP makes sense on a personal level. But it does mean that parliament loses experience and wisdom, not to mention people who have only just worked out their way around the building. Politicians often repeat the mistakes of the past – the level of turnover in parliament makes it even more likely that no one will notice.
At least those MPs made it into parliament at all. When I wrote my book Why We Get the Wrong Politicians in 2018, I found that the greatest barrier to us getting the right MPs was the sheer cost of standing for parliament. Even if you’d make a great legislator, even if you’d really like to be in Westminster representing your local area, you’d likely be put off by what I found: the personal cost of being a parliamentary candidate in the 2015 election was £11,118 – and the costs tripled if you were standing in a marginal seat where you had a chance of taking it off another party. Personal costs for Tories who won in marginal seats were astronomical, and even those who didn’t win still took a £18,701 hit in lost earnings by working for a couple of years for free, in housing costs, transport and so on. Labour candidates in marginal seats spent an average of £19,022 to win and the considerably higher sum of £35,843 on average to lose. Their successful safe seat colleagues still lost £13,617 on average.
The 2015 election was the last vaguely normal election, in that the parties knew when it was and had been preparing for it several years out. The 2017 and 2019 snap elections cost candidates much less – but many of those who had failed narrowly in 2015 turned down the offer of standing again in these snap elections, because they were still paying back their debts from the last go. We don’t know the precise date of the next election, because the Fixed-term Parliaments Act has been abolished – but the parties are already selecting candidates and getting them embedded in key seats. Those wannabe MPs better have deep pockets.
Why does this matter? If you’re mug enough to stand for parliament, then no one will shed a tear for the money you choose to spend trying to get through the longest and most expensive job interview in the world. But the cost means that many people simply cannot afford to stand for parliament, even if they’d make much better MPs than the ones who can. Since my book first came out, the main parties have made various moves to acknowledge the prohibitive costs, offering bursaries to a limited number of candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is a relief they have recognised one of the barriers to improving politics that has so long just been accepted as the way things are.
I fear now, though, that politicians are coming to accept a new normal of abuse and a miserable life that leads many of their best to quit, and still more to stay away. We are still getting the wrong politicians, and the ones we have are in many cases actively making things worse.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and presenter of Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster
