That’s the question posed by a new piece of academic research which shows just how much richer Conservative (though not Labour) MPs have ended up by the time they died:
While the role of money in policymaking is a central question in political economy research, surprisingly little attention has been given to the rents politicians actually derive from politics. We use both matching and a regression discontinuity design to analyze an original dataset on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. We find that serving in Parliament roughly doubled the wealth at death of Conservative MPs but had no discernible effect on the wealth of Labour MPs. We argue that Conservative MPs profited from office in a lax regulatory environment by using their political positions to obtain outside work as directors, consultants, and lobbyists, both while in office and after retirement. Our results are consistent with anecdotal evidence on MPs’ outside financial dealings but suggest that the magnitude of Conservatives’ financial gains from office was larger than has been appreciated.
Read more here.
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3 Comments
An impressive piece of research which takes me back to my youth pouring over biographies of MPs in the ‘Times Guide to the House of Commons’ for Michael Rush at Exeter University. I suspect that it’s too academic to have much political impact, though. I also suspect that if similar research is done 30 years hence that the difference between Conservative and Labour will have almost disappeared, in the same way that working class MPs scarcely exist any more.
It is historical, but it offers a very respectable basis for asking Tory candidates how much money they expect to make out of it if they win. “Do you expect to double your wealth if you are elected to Parliament? No? That is strange, most Tories do. Are you secretly not a Conservative?” etc.
see yesterday’s guardian article