Britain’s defeated Tory MPs struggle to adjust to civilian life

LONDON — Nearly a year after Britain’s seismic general election, former MPs booted out by the electorate are feeling abandoned.

The pain is particularly acute for the waves of defeated Conservative parliamentarians now adjusting to life beyond the Westminster bubble after the party’s humiliating election rout.

“It’s been months since I’ve heard anything from anyone in the party,” said a former Tory MP, defeated last year and granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The Conservative Party has done anything but wrap its arms around former MPs.”

While politics has always been a rough business, big swings in the mood of the electorate in recent years mean more and more former MPs are finding themselves reaching out for support — and finding a lot to be desired.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s landslide Labour majority in July came just five years after Conservative Boris Johnson’s own decisive victory.

That’s made for a rapid turnover of MPs. In 2019 some 24 percent of all incumbent MPs either threw in the towel or were kicked out of office. At last year’s election that figure stood at 52 percent — more than half of the entire House of Commons.

“No matter how well you personally prepare for it, it’s still quite a traumatic time,” said former Tory MP Iain Stewart, who represented Milton Keynes South for 14 years.

While it’s unlikely to elicit a huge amount of public sympathy, the brutal exit of so many MPs raises big questions about whether the next crop of political talent might be put off Westminster altogether. 

Shutting up shop

Fresh from publicly losing their jobs, former MPs can’t simply throw in the towel.

Parliamentarians bidding Westminster farewell have four months to complete a deluge of tasks, including closing down their offices.

This requires help from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), a public body that was created after Britain’s 2009 expenses scandal and put in charge of MPs’ salaries and entitlements.

It’s not just ex-MPs who lose their jobs on election night, but also their Westminster and constituency staff. Life as an MP is like running a small business — when it ends, everything from concluding lease agreements and destroying confidential information must be sorted.

“It was quite brutal,” said ex-Tory MP Sarah Atherton, who represented Wrexham between 2019 and 2024. “You are no longer of relevance.” 

IPSA also handles support for new MPs — leaving those on the way out fighting for assistance. “You are bottom of the pile,” Atherton said. “You have to get on with it, and you have to struggle through. And that was very difficult.”

Some financial measures are in place to soften the blow.

Former MPs who fight an election and lose are eligible for a loss-of-office payment equal to double the U.K.’s statutory redundancy entitlement. All departing MPs get a winding-up payment equivalent to four months’ salary.

Though that’s an increase from the previous entitlement of two months, its sufficiency has been questioned by some ex-politicians who suddenly found themselves out of work.

Ex-Conservative MP and Brexit Minister Steve Baker, who represented Wycombe for 14 years, said it was “nowhere near large enough,” adding: “If we want MPs to exercise leadership, there has to be some kind of safety net that you fall into if you lose your seat.”

Baker is calling for one year’s redundancy pay for ex-MPs “to get us over the horrible process of actually getting a job when you’re well-known.”

IPSA is also on hand to provide emotional support over the phone when ex-MPs see their careers go up in flames. There are mixed views on whether this goes far enough.

“We want to be as sensitive as we possibly can, make it as easy as possible,” said IPSA’s Director of Policy and Engagement Lee Bridges. “Our team were well-versed in how those members were going to be feeling and how to deal with people in those really difficult circumstances.”

Stewart said his experience of this had been positive: “It’s never going to be an easy process, but I found the support very good and they helped me.”

However, IPSA’s statutory obligation to former MPs ends after four months, meaning there’s little support that can be offered over the long term, unless parties themselves step up.

The ex-Tory MP quoted at the top of this article lamented that the offer of mental health support had lasted just a few months. “IPSA were disappointing on the whole,” the former MP said.

Cold shoulder 

For the Tories, simply keeping the lights on has meant that helping former colleagues took a back seat. The party already faces a battle to keep its relevance in opposition and retain donors and expensive headquarters.

After the election hammering, all defeated MPs were phoned by the party’s then-leader Rishi Sunak. They were offered management consultancy career support by a former colleague who’d become a life coach, as well as a careers fair. The verdict on this package was distinctly mixed among those POLITICO spoke to.

While Atherton praised the Tories, she said “quite a few” of her ex-colleagues were still struggling with the toll of defeat. “It’s been much harder than I ever thought, because I’m not sure what I could have done differently,” she said.

The anonymous ex-MP said a drinks reception with defeated colleagues “was utterly depressing. Everyone was just bereft.” They were even concerned that “one of our number would take their own life at some point over the last year.” 

“It’s been an incredibly difficult jobs market,” the same person said. “We’re not exactly that marketable.”

Baker suggested Conservative donors could help ease the transition by offering employment to ex-MPs — and lamented both the quality of the career advice provided by the party, and the risk-averse culture at companies regarding the hiring of former MPs who had taken strong positions.

“What I don’t need is: Here’s how to apply for a mid-ranking job in a corporate,” said Baker, a prominent figure in the party’s Brexit wars of the 2010s. “As soon as I apply, they know who I am, they do the Googling and they don’t want me.” 

“I don’t require emotional support from the Conservative Party,” Baker added. “If they offered it to me, I’d be extremely disappointed that they had kept money back.”

Open to work

The latest crop of ousted Tories aren’t the first to find themselves grappling with life after politics — as well as deep skepticism among the British public about some of the steps that might help ease the transition from politics.

“If someone is standing again for election, but they are also proactively looking at job opportunities in the eventuality that they might lose, there’s always the risk … that that information gets out and is politically damaging,” said former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, who lost his seat in 2019 and now runs the Unlock Democracy pressure group.

Atherton said if MPs maintained a second profession, it could make losing easier. “If you’ve managed to hold on to your second job, whether you’re a doctor, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re a nurse, that is worth its weight in gold,” she said.

British MPs are currently allowed to take on second jobs but are banned from providing paid parliamentary advice to outside organizations. Yet controversy over second jobs is never far from the headlines, and debate rages over where to draw the line.

Brake’s Unlock Democracy campaigns against MPs having second jobs involving large directorships or consultancies with outside firms.

But even he backs MPs earning “about half as much” as their political salary while in parliament, if limited to professions that require work to maintain an accreditation. Brake said this would mean MPs could more easily return to that role full-time “either because they choose to or because their electorate forces them to.”

Brake sees upsides to the churn, however. He suggests a higher turnover of MPs could mean a “more diverse range of people” in the Commons who want to serve for a single term rather than for their whole lives. 

In the meantime, the career prospects of the average MP look set to become only more precarious.

Nearly one in five seats (115) were won by a margin of 5 percent or less in 2024, some 48 seats more than in 2019. One in three seats (34 percent) had a victory margin of 10 points or less, up from 22 percent in 2019.

The political shake-up as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surges in the polls means many Labour MPs who replaced the Tories can already see the same cliff edge on the horizon.

“We don’t want to put people off from standing if they think there’s just going to be a … nightmare if they actually lose their seat,” said IPSA’s Bridges.

Nervous Labour MPs will be hoping the fate of some of those ousted Tories doesn’t await them in four years’ time.

“I’ve been surprised [by] the number of former MPs who are still unemployed,” the anonymous ex-Tory MP said. “People who I would have expected to have sort[ed] themselves out by now, and they still haven’t.” 

They added: “The Conservative Party has a history of treating people very badly, and it continues to do so.”

A Conservative Party spokesperson said: “Former MPs are valued members of the Conservative family. CCHQ will continue to support them to be vocal local champions in opposition to this dreadful Labour government.”