All findings

Where careers start, and restart

115 ministers came back after two or more years out, 28 of them into cabinet.

59%

of ministers who started at the Cabinet Office reached the cabinet

14%

of those who started as whips did

115

ministers came back after two or more years out

Where a minister's first job is turns out to say something about how far they go. Among the ministers first appointed up to 2012, who have had time to build a career, the departments they started in lead to the cabinet at very different rates.

Share who ever reached the cabinet, by where their first post was

Ministers first appointed up to 2012, with at least 15 starting in each

The cabinet means Secretary of State rank or above. Whips are counted as one group because their posts are in the whips' offices rather than a department. Departments are those in the data, so some renamed departments are separate.

10 of the 17 who started at the Cabinet Office and 15 of the 29 who started at the Treasury went on to the cabinet. The Home Office and Health come next, at 42% each. At the other end, 36 of the 256 ministers who started as whips (14%) got there, and only 3 of 20 who started at the environment department. The whips' office is the largest single starting point by far, and it is the least likely to lead to the cabinet.

The data shows the pattern, not the reason. It may be that the Treasury and the Cabinet Office are given to people who are already marked out, rather than that the jobs themselves lead anywhere.

Coming back

Careers are not always one-way. 115 ministers returned to office after at least two years away, 71 Conservative and 43 Labour, and 28 of them came back into the cabinet. Many of these gaps are simply opposition years, so a Labour minister out of office from 2010 to 2024 shows up with a gap of 14 years.