The Conservative party will lose almost 1,000 years of Commons experience just from MPs who have already announced they are standing down, a Guardian analysis has shown, amid an exodus likely to be even greater than in 1997.
So far, 66 MPs elected as Conservatives in 2019 have announced they will not stand again – this includes four who have since lost the whip and sit as independents – which is close to one in five of the total.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Conservative party will lose almost 1,000 years of Commons experience just from MPs who have already announced they are standing down, a Guardian analysis has shown, amid an exodus likely to be even greater than in 1997.
In 1997, the last time the Conservatives faced a likely wipeout after many years in power, 72 Tories stood down, a total expected to be exceeded especially if, as many predict, Rishi Sunak delays an election until the autumn.
Their departure, coupled with the expected defeat of many dozens more longstanding Tories, could represent an unprecedented loss of institutional memory for the party.
This averages at just under 15 years per MP, with the longest stint being Bill Cash, who was first elected in Stafford in 1984, shifting to the adjoining Staffordshire seat of Stone in 1997.
Historically, Bale noted, parties tended to survive such mass clear-outs as the bulk of the new MPs are people with direct experience of politics, for example on councils, or even in Westminster as aides.
However, there was one lesson that parties on the receiving end of a mass changeover should bear in mind: how to learn from the defeat, something neither the Conservatives or Labour did especially quickly after 1997 and 2010.
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