If Labour wants to convince disaffected voters that its politicians aren’t drawn from a narrow, self-serving Westminster elite, it has a few problems. The latest research found that 54 per cent of the party’s candidates selected in marginal or inherited seats (those with retiring MPs from the same party) for 2015 have already worked in politics or for think tanks. In comparison, 17 per cent of Conservative candidates are political insiders.
There’s another reason why Labour politicians might seem hard to tell apart. Let’s start with Aberavon, a constituency in south Wales that has voted Labour since the 1920s. There is little to tie Labour’s candidate to this safe seat. When not knocking on doors in Wales, he splits his time between Mayfair, where he works as a business adviser, and Denmark, where his wife, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, is prime minister. There’s a lot tying Stephen Kinnock to Labour, however. His father is the former party leader Neil Kinnock and his mother is Glenys Kinnock, the erstwhile Labour MEP.
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