Special advisers and career politicians

• Thatcher accelerated an earlier trend to use outside advisers rather than career civil servants for policy advice
• This continued in the post Thatcher Conservative governments and especially under New Labour
• Some political analysts have linked the fall in voter turn-out to a perception that the votes cast will not change the nature of government
• The share of votes for the two main parties also fell
• A political divide can be said to have opened up between the career politicians in London and the rest of the country
• The number of MPs with a university degree rose from 40% in the period 1918-45 to 75% in 2010
• The fraction of Labour MPs from a manual worker background was around one-third in 1945, declining to one in 2010
• The number of MPs from all parties who come from a legal background had also declined since 1979, with more than 70 falling into this category in 1974, diminishing to less than 30 in 1997
• Perhaps the most significant statistic is that the number of MPs who have previously worked for political organisations or for politicians increased from 3% in 1979 to 14% in 2010
• The Conservative Party in the Thatcher years changed the rules of political organisation and other parties had to change their approach in order to succeed