Lord Feldman’s announcement of a £250,000 bursary scheme for Conservative candidates shows that the Tory party is starting to face up to some of the little-discussed factors behind Parliament containing so few MPs from working class backgrounds. The cost of standing for Parliament in a seat that is considered winnable is obscene: candidates can lose £34,000 of their own money on average (that figure comes from this ConHome survey of 2005 candidates, but my own research which I am conducting currently suggests that it is roughly similar for those who stood in 2015: more on this soon). And this means that it’s impossible for some people to ever consider running.
The Conservatives ran their own survey which received 60,000 responses from members and activists, 83 per cent of whom said they wanted bursaries for candidates.
So the party chairman’s announcement is a good thing, though it’s worth noting that this £250,000 is the overall fund, and so if it covered candidates’ entire costs, it would only fund eight people, though that in itself is still a start.
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