Expectation Vs Reality: Being a Young Representative in the House of Commons

Parliaments have become increasingly diverse in terms of gender and ethnic composition, but the same cannot be said when it comes to age. Globally, young people (until 40 years old) are underrepresented in parliaments by a factor of 2 (Sundström and Stockemer 2021, 197). And those that do make it into parliaments, often leave quickly. These global trends ring true in the UK specifically. Many of the MPs who stood down after the last elections were comparatively younger (Baker et al. 2024). And the average age remains above 50 years old in the House of Commons, with even a slight upward trend. To better understand the apparent incompatibility of being young and an elected representative, this paper zooms in on how young parliamentarians both experience and imagine the role of representative. Based on 15 semi-structured interviews with young elected representatives to the House of Commons, this paper centers the experiences of young MPs from the United Kingdom. In bringing both the role expectations and experiences of young members of parliament together, this paper disentangles how the institutional setting influences the performance of representation. Its aims are twofold: to on the one hand better understand what young MP’s imagine(d) the role of representative to look like. This is done through a mapping of the main appeals and deterrents for young people specifically to take the leap into representative politics. And on the other hand, to explore how they perform and make representative claims based on these expectations; bound by the institutions in which they are underrepresented.