A NEW survey has ranked the UK’s most left and right-wing politicians.
Conducted by Royal Holloway, University of London and and Survation, it found that Green Party MP Caroline Lucas is the most left-wing MP in Britain, while John Redwood, Mark Jenkinson and Suella Braverman – all of the Conservative Party - were found to be the most right wing.
The National has delved into the data to aggregate our own list for Scotland’s MPs, finding that the SNP’s Steven Bonnar is the most left wing, while the Scottish Conservatives’ Andrew Bowie is the most right wing in the country.
See below for our full list:
*Please note that six MPs weren't present in the original data, including Stephen Flynn, Michael Shanks, Alyn Smith, Martin Docherty-Hughes, Neil Gray and Kirsten Oswald.
The survey set out to analyse the economic policy of all MPs in a way that hadn’t been attempted previously.
The research was based on a survey conducted by polling and market research agency Survation, who surveyed 1486 local councillors across England, Wales and Scotland, between August 7 and September 3.
Councillors were presented with pairs of MPs drawn from their local area, together with the leaders of the two largest parties – Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer – and were asked to choose the most left or right-wing MP out of each pair.
Researchers at Royal Holloway then modelled councillors' choices to work out which MPs were more likely to be picked as left wing, given their own position and the likely positions of the MPs they were compared to.
This modelling gives a single number for each MP, where smaller numbers indicate more left-wing MPs and larger numbers more right-wing MPs.
Lead researcher Professor Chris Hanretty, from the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, said: "Lots of us who follow politics obsessively know which MPs are more left or right wing. But we might struggle to rank all MPs, and we'd find it hard to communicate those results to voters.
“At a time when elections are looming, we hope this research enables voters to better understand the position of their local representative on the economy."
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