This paper uses the British element of the Electoral Systems and Party Personnel dataset 1983-2010 to assess the extent to which there has been a narrowing in the previous occupational experience of electoral candidates. There is a widely held belief that, although the House of Commons has diversified (marginally) in terms of sex and ethnicity, it has become an institution dominated by a self-perpetuating political class. This discourse combines a critic of the economic privilege enjoyed by many politicians with a lament for politicians with occupational experience outside of the political world. This view is commonplace in the media and among political commentators but as yet it has not been tested thoroughly in the British case with systematic quantitative data. We attempt to classify the personal histories of election candidates, permitting an analysis of change over time alongside a comparison of the characteristics of winners and losers.
