Parachute candidates are common in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom. The
Westminster system historically emphasizes
party discipline over responsiveness to constituencies. For example,
Margaret Thatcher, who was
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for over eleven years, represented
Finchley during her parliamentary career despite living in
Chelsea, London. As far back as the 1900s, the then-dominant
Liberal Party were parachuting candidates from
England into
safe seats in
Scotland, including
Winston Churchill, elected MP for
Dundee in 1908. This led to a formal protest movement, called Young Scots, arguing that objections to carpet-baggers were based on a lack of understanding of the political will of their constituents on matters like
Home Rule. A 2013
YouGov survey found that support for a hypothetical candidate rose by 12 points after voters learned that his opponent had moved to the area two years earlier and by 30 points if the opponent lived 120 miles away. The percentage of local MPs rose, according to Michael Rush of the
University of Exeter, from 25% in
1979 to 45% in
1997; Ralph Scott of
Demos calculates that 63% are local. According to surveys, public trust in all MPs has decreased, but trust in the local MP has increased, making pre-existing connections to seats more critical. Election advertisements emphasize local connections more than they mention the candidate's party or its leader. Such a change produces MPs who are more attentive to local issues, but may be detrimental to Britain's
first-past-the-post voting system designed to create broad parties that
party whips stabilize.
Labour Party •
Luciana Berger was a middle-class Londoner parachuted into the north-western working-class safe Labour seat of
Liverpool Wavertree. She was heavily criticised for having no connection to the Wavertree constituency or
Liverpool when she first ran in
2010. When a local radio station asked her basic questions about the
culture of Liverpool, she could not answer them and, during the selection process, she stayed at the house of retiring local MP
Jane Kennedy rather than resettle in the area. Some figures in the media suggested that she was only selected for the seat because of her close connections to the family of former Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Berger won the seat in 2010 with a slightly larger majority than Kennedy had in
2005, against the national trend, then retained it in
2015 and
2017. After joining the
Liberal Democrats in 2019, she unsuccessfully contested the
Greater London seat of
Finchley and Golders Green at the
2019 general election. She chose to stand there because of the seat's large Jewish population and
Remain vote, as well as her affinity towards living in London and choice to raise her children there rather than in Liverpool. •
Roy Jenkins was so unfamiliar with
Glasgow, he later wrote, that on his arrival to campaign at the
1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election its skyline was "as mysterious to me as the
minarets of Constantinople" to
Russian troops during the
Russo-Turkish War. Campaigning as a
Social Democrat, Jenkins won the election, taking the seat from the
Scottish Conservatives. •
David and
Ed Miliband were selected to fight safe Labour seats in
northern England,
South Shields and
Doncaster North respectively, despite being
Oxford graduates who were born, raised, and living in London while working as political advisers. David was elected for the first time in
2001, and Ed in 2005. Both would later serve as ministers under Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown and fight against each other in the
2010 party leadership election. •
Shaun Woodward, who was first elected as a
Conservative MP in 1997, defected to the
Labour Party in 1999. He faced much criticism from former Conservative colleagues, particularly when he refused to resign and fight a by-election. In 2001, Woodward did not contest his safe Conservative seat of
Witney in Oxfordshire, instead being selected for the similarly ultra-safe Labour seat of
St Helens South in Merseyside. During the early days of the 2001 general election campaign, Labour minister
Chris Mullin wrote in his diary on 11 May about "speculation about which members of the New Labour elite will be parachuted into one of the safe seats being vacated by MPs retiring at the last moment." On 14 May, Mullin described Woodward's selection at St Helens as "one of New Labour's vilest stitch-ups" and wrote that listening to him campaigning as a Labour candidate "made my flesh creep."
Conservative Party • Prior to the
2024 general election,
Richard Holden, who was serving as the
Chairman of the Conservative Party, represented the marginal seat of
North West Durham, which he won in the
2019 general election with a slender 2.4% majority. His seat was abolished by the
2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies and he was later selected for the safe Conservative seat of
Basildon and Billericay after the Conservative Party imposed him as the candidate against local opposition; Holden was the only contender allowed to stand on the shortlist. This led to accusations of carpetbagging, especially after it emerged that, in January 2024, he described himself as "bloody loyal to the north-east", and denied he would seek a safer seat. Ironically, Holden went on to win by a mere twenty votes. •
Boris Johnson's selection for the ultra-safe Conservative seat of
Henley in 2001, after
the party's central office parachuted him in, was described by senior local Tory Mike McInnes as "a disaster for the integrity of modern politics" and "arrogant in the extreme", Johnson having "blustered in with no knowledge about the constituency". McInnes commented that he could not see him supporting a hypothetical local old lady who was having problems with her housing benefit and asked, "Are people going to feel comfortable going to him?" Likewise, Johnson's main rival, Liberal Democrat candidate
Catherine Bearder said: "In Henley, you can put a blue rosette on a donkey and it will get elected. And that's what happened in 2001... He clearly just wanted to be an MP.
As soon as London came up, he was off out." •
George Galloway was expelled from Labour in 2003 over
Iraq War-related controversies and, despite previously representing
Glasgow Kelvin, stood for the
Respect Party in the Greater London constituency of
Bethnal Green and Bow at the
2005 general election, where he used his opposition to the war and the local Muslim population to gain the seat from Labour. Constitutional Affairs Minister
David Lammy said he was a carpetbagger who had whipped up racial tensions. After standing down from Bethnal Green and Bow in 2010, he stood for Respect at a
2012 by-election in the
West Yorkshire seat of
Bradford West, another constituency with a high local Muslim population. Galloway made a point of not drinking alcohol and again gained the seat from Labour. He lost Bradford West in 2015 to Labour's
Naz Shah. As an
independent, he unsuccessfully contested
Manchester Gorton in 2017 and
West Bromwich East in 2019. He attempted to be selected as the
Brexit Party candidate in the
Cambridgeshire seat of
Peterborough in a
2019 by-election but the party selected local businessman
Mike Greene. Having formed the
Workers Party of Britain, Galloway returned to parliament at the
2024 Rochdale by-election in which there were a variety of problems with the major-party candidates and he ran a campaign
critical of Israel over its role in the
Gaza war. • In 1974,
Enoch Powell left the Conservative Party and joined the
Ulster Unionists, becoming the Westminster MP for
South Down, despite having no Ulster connections. In 2002, when ex-Tory MP
Andrew Hunter (who had family and
Orange Order connections with Northern Ireland) joined the
Democratic Unionist Party, the UUP accused him of being a carpet-bagger. It was pointed out the criticism was "a little hollow" considering the UUP's prior acceptance and promotion of Powell. ==United States==