Why quitting Tory MPs should worry about their future job prospects

Wanted: new job for Conservative MP seeking pastures new. Have hotline to government bigwigs. Please don’t mention illegal parties, sleaze scandals and a crashed economy.

Yes, the trickle of Tories fleeing Westminster is turning into a stampede, with Sajid Javid’s shock announcement that even a former chancellor in his political prime has better things to do.

The two-time leadership hopeful is following young Tory high-flyers out of the door – William Wragg, Dehenna Davison and Chloe Smith, the people who should be the party’s hopes for the future.

In a very tight market, there will be a queue of would-be employers eager to gobble up the skills of these retiring MPs, won’t there? Well, perhaps not.

Several studies have uncovered the uncomfortable truth that a former MP has no obvious next job and that many bosses run a mile from putting her or him on their books.

A 2007 study by Leeds University researchers highlighted one careers advice company that called ex-MPs largely “commercially unemployable at senior management level”.

After a mass exit at the 2015 election, the same team looked into what had happened to 2010 departees and found many struggled to replace their lost status and earnings.

Almost half took at least three months to find a new job and one in 10 required a full year, four in 10 of them having to settle for less money than they earned on the Commons benches.

Of course, the big players walked into high-profile and lucrative directorships at top firms – as Mr Javid, a former investment banker, no doubt will – but his lower-profile, less experienced colleagues are unlikely to.

Interestingly, many MPs appear to struggle with giving up the politics bug and remain active in public life, in charitable or voluntary work, rather than finding genuinely new careers.

Furthermore, after the 2010 purge, it was difficult to escape the toxic fallout from the expenses scandal in the run-up to that election, the cloud of anger and suspicion cast over all politicians.

Even MPs who hadn’t fiddled their expenses reported harassment by constituents who viewed the lot of them as self-serving careerists and that employers considered them “soiled goods”.

Today, the Partygate affair echoes that 2009 scandal over moats and duck houses in the public fury it provoked, even if the partying was by Boris Johnson and his aides. The stain may endure.

Mr Javid won’t be the last Conservative to walk away in the weeks to come – but they should not all expect to walk easily into a bright future.