The United Kingdom has a new Labour government whose class composition is radically different from previous ones.
According to our analysis of what was the Labour Party’s shadow Cabinet, some 46% of the members selected by Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, were raised by parents with working class occupations. That figure is well above average in terms of the broader working population and it stands in stark contrast to the 7% of outgoing Conservative Cabinet members of working-class origin.
Similarly, while 69% of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government was privately educated at some point, the figure for Starmer’s shadow Cabinet was 17%. That is significantly lower even than the Cabinets of previous Labour prime ministers. Some 32% of Tony Blair’s first Cabinet was privately educated, compared to 35% under Harold Wilson and 25% under Clement Attlee. Nationwide, around 10% of the U.K.’s population has been privately educated at some point.
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