Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election
| Published date | 01 February 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241270519 |
| Author | Chris Butler,Marta Miori,Rob Ford |
| Date | 01 February 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241270519
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2025, Vol. 27(1) 242 –269
© The Author(s) 2024
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sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13691481241270519
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Inside the ‘secret garden’:
Candidate selection at the
2019 UK general election
Chris Butler1, Marta Miori2
and Rob Ford2
Abstract
Candidate selections are seen as the ‘secret garden’ of UK politics. Hundreds of parliamentary
constituencies rarely change hands, meaning that the ‘real election’ is the incumbent party’s selection
process. Yet scholarship into candidate selection in the United Kingdom remains limited. In this
article, we build a novel dataset of known shortlisted candidates in winnable seats to offer the first
cross-party analysis of who gets shortlisted, and what factors influence success among shortlisted
candidates. We find that shortlisted female and ethnic minority candidates are still less likely to be
selected as parliamentary candidates, while living locally is by far the most significant factor affecting
selection success. However, the nature of the 2019 snap election allowed parties to use emergency
powers to advantage party insiders in late selections. We further find that, contrary to media focus,
party faction was not a significant factor in Conservative or Labour Party selections.
Keywords
British politics, candidates, political elites, representation, selections
Introduction
Prior to the 2019 general election, nearly 14 million UK voters lived in constituencies
represented by the same party continuously since 1945 (Garland, 2019). Incumbent party
candidates in such constituencies effectively have a job for life.1 Yet how British parties
select candidates for office remains under-researched. Despite regular studies into the
backgrounds of MPs and candidates (e.g. Allen, 2013; Butler et al., 2021; Cairney et al.,
2016; Lamprinakou et al., 2017), there is little recent research into who applies and who
succeeds in UK parties’ candidate selection processes (for an exception, see Ashe, 2019).
Over the 2010s, UK MPs became more representative of the population in terms of gen-
der and ethnicity (Butler et al., 2021) but less representative in terms of class, education and
occupational background (Allen, 2013; O’Grady, 2019). These changes are logically the
1University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium
2The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Corresponding author:
Marta Miori, 4th Floor Politics Department, Arthur Lewis Building, The University of Manchester,
Manchester M13 9NX, UK.
Email: marta.miori@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
1270519BPI0010.1177/13691481241270519The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsButler et al.
research-article2024
Original Article
Butler et al. 243
result of distinctive characteristics among more recently elected, and therefore more recently
selected, MPs. This suggests that the barriers faced by female and ethnic minority aspirants
may have declined since Norris and Lovenduski’s (1995) ground-breaking study found that
UK selectorates were biased, although the barriers faced by candidates with fewer eco-
nomic and educational resources may have increased (Murray, 2021).
Norris and Lovenduski’s pioneering work led to the long-standing British Representation
Audit, formerly the British Candidates’ Study (Campbell and van Heerde-Hudson, 2019).
These data have shown that candidates selected to run for Parliament are unrepresentative
in terms of people living with disabilities (Evans and Reher, 2020), occupational and edu-
cational background, gender and ethnicity (Allen, 2018; Best et al., 2001; Butler et al.,
2021; Cairney et al., 2016; Lamprinakou et al., 2017). However, in seeking to understand
who emerges from the selection process as a candidate for Parliament, we also need to
understand who makes it onto the selection shortlist, and who succeeds and fails in the
competition for support from members. Analysing the mix of shortlisted candidates offers
new insight into the ‘supply side’ of the selection process, by showing what kinds of peo-
ple are available for members to select between. Then by analysing what factors predict
success or failure among shortlisted candidates, we gain new insights into the ‘demand
side’ of the selection process – where party members favour some kinds of candidates over
others in selection contests.
An analysis of the selection processes and outcomes in winnable parliamentary constitu-
encies is timely for three reasons. First, given changes in the make-up of MPs in recent elec-
tions, it is worth revisiting the three-decade old research showing that the House of Commons’
un-representativeness in terms of gender and ethnicity is partly the result of biases among
selectorates (Norris and Lovenduski, 1995). Second, the last two British general elections
have been ‘snap’ elections called with little advanced notice. This has meant that parties have
not finished selecting candidates before the election was called, leading to rushed selections
and deviations from standard procedures. These may benefit both central parties trying to
influence the selection process and ‘insider’ candidates (Rahat, 2007). Testing whether dif-
ferent types of candidates are more likely to succeed when central parties have more power
over the selection process allows us insights into whether local members have different con-
ceptions than party elites of what makes a good candidate (Albaugh, 2022).
Third, candidate selection has in recent elections been seen as a battleground for fac-
tional control over Parliamentary parties (Cowburn and Kerr, 2022). Jeremy Corbyn’s
leadership of the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019 was marked by continual battles
with an unsupportive Parliamentary Party largely to the right of him ideologically
(Cowley and Kavanagh, 2017; Ford et al., 2021). This led campaign groups on the left,
such as Momentum, to call for sitting MPs to face mandatory re-selection, and for such
groups to endorse and mobilise behind candidates in parliamentary selection battles
(Gerbaudo, 2021). Despite the left-wing leanings of the leader’s office, there were also
reports of left-wing Labour candidates facing obstacles to selection in 2019 (Butler et al.,
2021). For the Conservatives, candidates in 2019 were required to sign a pledge to sup-
port Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal (Ford et al., 2021), after several less Eurosceptic MPs
had the whip removed in September 2019. As with Labour, there were also multiple
reports of central party interference in selections (Shipman, 2019).
This study seeks to shed light on candidate selection processes and outcomes by ana-
lysing a database of candidates shortlisted for a winnable Parliamentary constituency at
the 2019 general election. The data were collected by the authors from various online
sources and through contact with journalists and party activists. It represents the first
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