What will the House of Commons look like after the general election?

We don’t know when the general election will come, or who will win, albeit we can make some fairly safe guesses. However, what is as near to certain as can be is that the next House of Commons will look, sound and behave very differently from the present one.

The preponderance of mostly male Conservatives standing down or facing likely defeat – and the sheer scale of that defeat, coupled with an influx of more gender-balanced and diverse Labour candidates – means that the next House will have a record number of female MPs, and more people from an ethnic minority background than ever before. It will also be younger, feature more members from LGBT+ communities, and, dare one say it, be more “woke” and open to newer ways of running parliamentary debates, dress codes, hours of work and much else. We are on the brink of a dramatic change...

Well, there are those MPs who are cheerfully retiring in the conventional manner; there are also younger Tories, mostly on the back benches, who fear a long period of frustrating and financially unrewarding opposition; there are defectors from the main parties who are facing oblivion; and there are a number of figures who have been variously expelled, suspended, deselected and/or disgraced. Some elected in 2019 have already left, more or less of their own accord, including Nadine Dorries, Owen Paterson, Boris Johnson and Neil Parish.

The latest to declare time is James Heappey, a minister of state at defence. Heappey says he now wishes “to step away from politics, prioritise my family, and pursue a different career”. He is 43, and his seat at Wells in Somerset is vulnerable to the Liberal Democrats. He is the 62nd Conservative MP to confirm that he will not stand in the next general election, and the 97th MP if you count those from all parties.

Bluntly, in the case of those elected as Conservatives (and some sitting as independents), it is because they see no political future for themselves, and are young enough to seek an alternative career.

The prospective Labour departures are generally more conventional cases, with MPs standing down after long service. Thus, while the Tory MPs stepping down have an average age of around 56, their Labour counterparts have an average age of 69, and are mostly veteran MPs retiring from professional careers in parliament – Rosie Winterton, Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman.

By contrast, some of the Tories’ more youthful representatives are off, including some of the talented and high-profile red-wall intake of 2019, such as Dehenna Davison, as well as more experienced figures such as Ben Wallace and Dominic Raab. Theresa May might have continued to contribute, too. It’s worth mentioning that there’s at least one case in which personal safety was a consideration: that of the Tory Mike Freer, whose office was recently firebombed.

Some of the SNP MPs facing defeat might also be choosing to jump first, while their great young star Mhairi Black has declared herself to be disillusioned.

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According to the House of Commons Library, the number of MPs leaving is high, at around 100, but not outlandishly so. Some 74 MPs did not stand for re-election at the 2019 general election, and that number in turn was high compared with 2017 (an election that, like the one in 2019, followed a “short” parliament) – but lower than at any other election since 1979. An average of 87 MPs stood down from the House of Commons at general elections between 1979 and 2010.

Certainly one of the biggest since the abolition of the rotten boroughs and the dawn of democratic politics following the Great Reform Act in 1832. It isn’t just that the number of MPs standing down is somewhat above average, but also because the Tory loss of seats in 2024 is likely to be of historic proportions, leaving the party with fewer than in the previous disasters of 1997, 1945 and 1906, and reduced to the smallest Commons group ever – a rump.

So the total turnover, from a mixture of Tory losses and voluntary retirements (in safer seats) combined with normal retirement patterns in other parties, could push well into the 200s, or around 50 per cent. Coupled with the big Tory win in 2019, along with the Johnson purge of anti-Brexiteers and the 2015 rout of Lib Dem and Scottish Labour members, it means that relatively few MPs from any party will survive from, say, the Blair era, or even the 2010 parliament.

Only the upheaval seen at the 1945 election, when the exceptionally old parliament elected in 1935 was finally dissolved, is likely to compare to the numerical and demographic changes we are about to witness.

Of course not. Democratic renewal is healthy, and parliament is supposed to reflect the nation for which it makes laws. Complacency breeds corruption. The British electoral system of first-past-the-post does exaggerate shifts in public opinion, but it can also thereby support periodic bursts of radical change, and bring in new blood and fresh thinking.

If there is to be a Labour cabinet, then only a few members of it – Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn – will have served at that level before. There will only be one former prime minister in the house, assuming that Liz Truss is re-elected and Sunak loses the election and quits the Commons (or loses his seat first).

For some voters who “want my country back”, the vision of a more female, more ethnically diverse, younger and less formal body of MPs may seem disquieting – but it will be what the country voted for. It will be the first parliament elected since Brexit, and, oddly enough, the most pro-European since the New Labour landslide in 1997. There will be fewer “working class” members, former service personnel will be rare, not many will have business experience, and an even bigger proportion will boast a degree.

A cohort of new Conservatives, including Nick Timothy and Rupert Harrison, will have to get on with the arduous task of rebuilding their denuded party – but they can also expect rapid promotion through the thinned-out ranks.

The general outlook of the 2024 House will be progressive and centrist, even if the Conservative opposition lurches to the right. Few, if any, will have first-hand memories of, say, the Thatcher revolution; still less the corporatist world that preceded it. If we’re fortunate, they’ll carry less ideological baggage, but there is also a bigger risk of repeating the errors of the past.

Many old faces – Matt Hancock, Caroline Lucas, Kwasi Kwarteng, possibly Jeremy Corbyn – will be absent, but there will be plenty of new talent, and some embarrassments, to make political life more interesting. It should be lively.