In this week’s Spectator, I profile the 2015 intake of Tory MPs: a bright, pragmatic bunch who don’t like to call themselves Thatcherite. Ministers who have sat in the Commons Chamber and heard maiden speeches from this new bunch have been seriously impressed, with some remarking that they’ve wondered what they’ve done with their own lives after hearing the extraordinary experiences that the new intake have brought with them into the Chamber.
Those extraordinary experiences include working as postmen, teachers, doctors, rural auctioneers, and nurses. There are very few political animals who’ve slaved as special advisers before becoming MPs, or whose families are political dynasties. But the bulk of these new MPs have had hugely successful careers in the law and business before getting elected: Lucy Frazer, for instance, is one of the youngest QCs in the country and now also the Tory MP for South East Cambridgeshire.
This impressive pile of CVs inevitably means people are trying to identify the ‘rising stars’ of the Tory intake.
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