Blue army’s new recruits help change face of Commons
They came from Mansfield, Wolverhampton, Bassetlaw and Bolsover. They have been teachers, personal protection officers and dolphin trainers. The one thing they have in common is that before last week most were not expecting to exchange their previous lives for jobs as Conservative MPs.
‘‘I feel a bit like Paddington,’’ said Dehenna Davison, 26, the member for Bishop Auckland who arrived in London by train along with four of her now ‘‘blue wall’’ Tory colleagues. ‘‘Please look after this bear.’’
Yesterday Boris Johnson told the intake they represented a ‘‘new party’’ and that they had been elected to ‘‘get things done’’.
Flick Drummond, the MP for Meon Valley who represented Portsmouth South between 2015 and 2017, said that the prime minister was ‘‘very inspiring’’, adding: ‘‘He talked about how excited he was to see so many of us here. He said we are here to get things done. We are here to get Brexit done,’’ she said.
Caroline Ansell, who defeated the Liberal Democrats to win back the Eastbourne seat that she had held between 2015 and 2017, said: ‘‘There is a real energy, a real buzz. Everybody is very keen to move forward.’’ Paul Howell, who took Tony Blair’s old Sedgefield seat, said: ‘‘It is a fabulous occasion. It is a new profile for the Conservative Party. We have got to deliver across the country.’’
An analysis by The Times shows that the make-up House of Commons will be different from the Parliament that was dissolved than two months ago.
Out of 650 MPs, 140 will be new, almost a third more than in 2017. On both sides of the House MPs will be younger and more diverse and fewer will have been to public school.
More Labour MPs will be women than men. Of the new Labour MPs elected last week 20 were women and six were men, making a total of 104 female MPs and 98 men.
The Tories have fewer, in part because so many women stood down when the election was called. It has returned 87 women, 24 per cent of the total and up from the 67 that the party had in 2017.
The new parliament will have 65 MPs from an ethnic minority background, a record level of diversity, compared with 52 nonwhite MPs after the 2017 election.
There are 22 non-white Conservative MPs, 41 Labour and two Lib Dems; 20 per cent of Labour MPs are from ethnic minorities, compared with 6 per cent of Conservatives in the new House of Commons.
One in ten MPs is now from a minority background, bringing the House of Commons a step closer to being representative of the electorate as a whole where about 12 per cent of people are from an ethnic minority background.
However, no non-white MPs were returned in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Research from the Sutton Trust also shows that MPs are less likely to be privately educated or to have gone to Oxbridge than after any previous election.
Only 29 per cent of MPs from the three main parties went to independent schools, down from 32 per cent in 2017.
However, only ten independent schools educated 6 per cent of all MPs: 11 went to Eton, four to Millfield and four to Winchester.
Only one in five MPs in the new House of Commons attended Oxbridge, although the figure among Conservatives was a little over one in four, or 27 per cent. This is down from 2010 when 38 per cent of Tory MPs had been to Oxbridge.
This year the average age of Conservative MPs is 47.4 based on 161 MPs for whom there is data available In the last parliament the figure was 50.4. in the last parliament. The average age of Labour MPs is 50.8, down from 52.3.