387 All the major UK parties have well-established formal candidate selec- tion procedures, governed by party constitutions and with clearly demar- cated roles for central of fces, parliamentary assessment boards (the Conservatives), trade unions (Labour), approved lists and local party associations. These rules and procedures operated, with some adjustments throughout the entire period following the October 1974 election until 2017. This period of stability was disrupted by the snap elections called in 2017 and 2019. Snap elections strain party selection processes, forc- ing the parties to shortcut the usual procedures. The limited timeframe provides both constraints and opportunities for competing elements within parties. Central party candidate selection teams have diminished capacity to vet candidates, risking some poor choices, but the potential to reduce the involvement of local party associations can also give the cen- tre the opportunity to shape the selection process to serve national lead- ership goals and promote favoured candidates. Tensions have certainly arisen because of the accelerated candidate selection processes, but rather than disruption, one of the most striking fndings of this chapter is how well-established trends in the backgrounds of MPs and candidates evident over a prolonged period have continued, and sometimes accelerated, in the more fraught selection environment of the last two elections. CHAPTER 11 Political Recruitment Under Pressure, Again: MPs and Candidates in the 2019 General Election Chris Butler, Rosie Campbell, and Jennifer Hudson © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ford et al., The British General Election of 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74254-6_11