Conservative MPs who lost their seat at the last election could be experiencing “trauma” from being out of work, the Association of Former Members of Parliament has claimed.
Hundreds of Tory parliamentarians lost their seats at the last general election when Labour stormed into power with a landslide victory.
It has left former political heavyweights such as Sir Charles Walker having to find alternative employment, which has been hard to come by.
Speaking to The Telegraph, he said he is talking to “more and more colleagues who are in career distress”, who are “simply just not getting interviews”.
Sir Charles said he had earned £575 since losing his seat, taking £500 on election night and £75 for appearing on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House since July.
“I am very lucky, I’m in my later years, I have some financial resources I can fall back on – I took my House of Commons pension early.
“But it’s not going to last forever,” he added.
Another Tory MP who had a whirlwind career is Stoke on Trent North’s former representative, Jonathan Gullis.
After losing out to David Williams in July, he has been unable to secure employment, which has a knock-on effect on his wife and two children, aged four and two.
“I’ve applied for a few jobs and sadly not even had an interview yet,” he said in a radio interview in September.
According to the Association of Former Members of Parliament, vacating the Commons can be a genuinely traumatic experience.
In written evidence to Parliament in 2022, the group said that members struggle to adjust to life away from Westminster and, for some, “the psychological effect and trauma of losing their seat”.
A 2006 study on the experiences of former MPs recognised that, while the public might have limited sympathy, the loss of a parliamentarian’s vocation led to a period of grieving with the same feelings of shock, anger and shame as might accompany a bereavement.