An investigation of politician mobility in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The south east of England, and in particular London have the greatest mobility. In general the patterns for MPs and MEPs are fairly similar, except in respect of age.Females were more likely to cross more than one regional boundary than males, particularly for Conservative MPs, and there was a higher differential in this regard for MEPs compared to MPs. It was concluded that whilst there is considerable politician mobility for both MPs and MEPs, the vast majority represent constituencies within their region of birth, or an adjacent region.

The personal vote, electoral experience, and local connections: Explaining retirement underperformance at UK elections 1987–2010

“…This last measure links electoral experience and local connections by examining whether the candidate has a track record of electoral success in the locality to indicate their track record on local issues (Allen, 2013). The selected measures follow the example of Gandy (2014) in examining both direct (service to the community) and indirect (birth, residence) local connections and are all binary. The definition of being local used here is based on counties rather than constituencies due to changing boundaries over the period – a candidate may have attended a school in a neighbouring constituency which has subsequently become part of the constituency they are standing in for example.…”

“…In Campbell and Cowley’s (2014) experimental survey testing the relative impact of candidate characteristics on voters, residency had by far the largest effect on candidate preference. Gandy’s (2014) study of the local connections of MPs offers some interesting findings; not least the regional disparity between the likelihood of having a local MP. However, and linked to the discussion of electoral experience, those who progress into (shadow) cabinet positions are likely to have crossed multiple constituency boundaries, with parties ‘engineer[ing] the placement of their rising stars into safe seats’ (Gandy, 2014: 207).…”

The Rise of the Local MP

“…For example, the obvious downside to using birthplace - as here - is that an MP may be born in one place but move away when very young, growing up in a different part of the country, perhaps then acquiring very deep roots away from their place of birth. One earlier paper on this subject noted the MP who believes he was born in London but was then adopted and brought up in the Midlands (Gandy, 2014). But birthplace has the advantage that it cannot be altered to make a candidate appear more electorally appealing.…”