One day they're the nation's privileged representatives, with fat salaries, their own private staffs and offices in one of the world's most famous buildings. The next they're out on their ears. What happens to MPs after they lose their seats? Stephen Moss talks to some of those who were booted out on May 5

'MPs are like third division footballers," says Joe Ashton, a former Labour MP. "They get the same amount of money, the same amount of respect, are as well known locally and have the same life expectancy in the job, about eight and a half years. And when they finish they can face the same kind of problems getting other work."

Ashton lasted a lot longer than eight and a half years - he stood down as MP for Bassetlaw in 2001 after 32 years in parliament - but he saw others come and go through the Commons' revolving door and decided that the mother of parliaments was neglecting its maternal role. Former MPs often failed to pick up the pieces of their pre-Westminster life and were struggling to make ends meet; having enjoyed the camaraderie of the house, they were suddenly isolated; and having been accorded status, they were now ignored - no more early-morning calls from the Today programme - or, worse, ridiculed. "There's no sympathy for an ex-MP," says Ashton.

He was especially struck by the plight of some of the Tories defeated in 1997, when 160 lost their seats in the New Labour landslide. "One drank himself to death, two or three more suffered from alcohol problems and depression, another was so broke he had to take his kids out of school," he says. His response was to form an association of ex-MPs, a support group that aims to help members once their 15 minutes of fame - or perhaps their eight and a half years of infamy - is over.

Ashton paints a grim picture for those who have been defeated at the polls. "The shock of losing is traumatic," he says. "You learn that you've lost at midnight, your opponents are singing and chortling, it's a cruel, ruthless arena."

When you talk to MPs who have lost their seats, you get a palpable sense of their disappointment, frustration and feelings of rejection. Fifty MPs were ejected on May 5, 36 of them Labour members. I contacted Barbara Roche, the former Home Office minister who saw a Labour majority of more than 10,000 evaporate in Hornsey and Wood Green. She was initially friendly, but I felt a sudden froideur when I explained that I was writing about the difficulty of remaking your life outside parliament. "No, I don't want to talk about that," she said firmly.

I had hoped to talk to Tim Collins, former shadow education spokesman and the most prominent of the Tories who lost on May 5, but he too has gone to ground. "His defeat was totally unexpected," says a press spokesman at Conservative campaign HQ. "He has had many requests for interviews, but has declined them all." Little wonder: Collins is 41, a politician from the cradle, living and breathing the Westminster air. He has not just lost his job; he has lost his oxygen supply.

Other victims of this quadrennial night of the long knives appear to have disappeared completely. One former Labour MP is no longer in contact with his constituency office, even though ex-MPs are supposed to keep their offices going for several months after their defeat to conclude constituency casework, return correspondence, wind down with as much grace as possible.

The night's most surprising casualty was Labour's Keith Bradley, who lost Manchester Withington on a 17% swing - the victim of local students' hostility to tuition fees, the anti-war factor and a Lib Dem scare story about supposed threats to the local hospital. He remains devastated by the defeat, after 18 years representing the constituency. "I didn't anticipate losing," he says. "I thought I'd win, but in the last couple of days I felt that this coalition of forces against us was having a resonance. People wanted to send a message to the government and thought they could do it without losing the seat. Only now do they realise what they've done."

Bradley claims local Lib Dems portrayed him as pro-war even though he had voted against it, and that they cooked up the bogus story about the hospital closure. He believes the Tories used an even meaner tactic in a seat in which the party was a distant third, choosing a Londoner called Karen Bradley to fight the seat just to sow confusion.

Bradley, a former deputy chief whip and minister in several departments, still sounds as if he's in shock. "You don't plan to lose your seat," he says. "Everything you've worked for over 18 years is suddenly taken away. You also feel a sense of personal rejection because you mistakenly believe that you will survive the tide that's running against the government."

Bradley is 55, a tricky age. He has three children, aged 17, 14 and nine, and was a health service administrator before becoming an MP in 1987. He had hoped to serve in two more parliaments and then retire. Now what? "I'm not rushing into decisions," he says. "I'm at an age now where I can't afford to make a mistake. I have a young family, all at school, and whatever decision I make has to be right for them. My wife and children have been extremely supportive. They have to come to terms with it, too, because they have only ever known me as a member of parliament."

Helen Clark, Labour MP for Peterborough from 1997 until her defeat on May 5, recently wrote an emotional article in the Daily Telegraph describing how life as one of the "undead" felt. "Losing a seat is easy," she wrote. "Living after losing a seat is not. You wake up the next morning with the task of filling it - and the afternoon and the evening. You can't taste food and you can't sleep. Dressing is difficult, as is hair-washing, ditching dead lightbulbs and dismantling the ironing board. I hate all my clothes and could cheerfully shred all my MP suits. Except that I can't because I'll get precisely six months' 'redundancy' pay."

When I speak to her a few days later, her feelings seem less straightforward. She says she was "gutted" to lose, is bitter that she received no support during the campaign from Labour HQ and is fretting about how she will get by financially. Yet she also feels liberated. "I feel a real sense of freedom now I'm not in there," she says. "I think 'I've got me back'. I feel I've gone back to the person I was eight years ago, with all the hope and a bright future ahead of her."

Clark says she realised that defeat was likely - she was defending a majority of less than 3,000 in a seat that has traditionally been Tory and had been undermined by a feud in the local party - but it still left a vacuum. One of her many complaints against Labour HQ is that it failed to provide her with a paid agent. She also says she has heard nothing from Number 10 since her defeat, unlike others who have received telephone calls or handwritten notes from the prime minister.

But Clark was also bruised more generally by her experience as an MP. As one of Labour's lobby fodder, she says she felt undervalued and ignored. The prime minister was remote, the chief whip hostile, New Labour increasingly distant from the party of Wilson and Castle with which she had grown up. "I thought becoming an MP would be a bright new dawn," she says, "but after I got in I remained chained to the spot. I never felt I was being stretched at any stage. It's terrible to be deprived of a considerable salary in the space of an hour, but had I got in, what situation would I have been in? I said to a junior whip after 2001, 'Have I got another four years as a glorified councillor, another four years of this crap?' He said, 'Talk to Tony Blair,' but the chief whip told me, 'Tony Blair is not for the likes of you!'"

Clark is 50 and used to be a teacher. She is not amused by my suggestion that she could go back to teaching and a salary of less than half the £59,095 she was earning as an MP. Instead, she intends to write and is currently working on proposals for two books - one about "Blair's blokes", the other a novel. So irritated is she with new Labour that she has left the party, and she says that if Kenneth Clarke were to win the Tory leadership she would be tempted to switch sides, but she has not yet, as was reported, joined the Conservative party. Indeed, she says that following their third successive defeat they are adopting "Stasi tactics" that are even more controlling than those employed by Labour party.

John Cryer, who was ousted in Hornchurch by 400 votes, sounds almost chipper compared with Bradley and Clark. Like Clark, he was one of the class of 97, taking this corner of Essex by 5,000 votes, but at 41 he feels his time will come again. He has no plans to move away from Hornchurch, where his children are settled at school, and says he may try to fight an east London seat in the future - Hornchurch itself will disappear as a result of boundary changes.

Cryer was born to be a politician. His father, Bob, was a Labour MP for many years. His mother, Ann, is Labour MP for Keighley and held her seat on May 5 with an increased majority, enjoying one of the best Labour results in the country. They spoke by phone during the night of the count. "How was that?" I ask him. "Fine for her but not for me," he deadpans.

Cryer is philosophical about his defeat. "You never stop campaigning and you never stop fighting," he says. "I was on the go for eight years, and I was deeply disappointed to lose. It's traumatic. But you have to take these things in your stride. You have to plan for things going wrong." He believes there are second chances in politics. "There is a long history of losing in marginal seat and coming back in a safer seat elsewhere" - Michael Foot and his own father are examples.

The biggest problem, Cryer says, is the amount of time he now has on his hands. "I constantly feel I should be doing things. I'm going training with Hornchurch swimming club tonight, so at least I'm getting a bit fitter." He is also, in that phrase beloved of exiting politicians, spending more time with his family. "It was traumatic for us all on the night of my defeat, but my wife is pleased to have me around, and I'm not a loser in the eyes of my children."

Cryer, a perpetual rebel ("I was off message for the whole eight years"), was a journalist with Tribune and the Morning Star before he became an MP. He now hopes to become a political officer in a trade union, but the family obsession with politics - "it's in the genes, a recurring disease" - is likely to carry him back.

At 67, Brian Cotter, the Liberal Democrat MP for Weston-super-Mare before May 5, has no intention of standing again. If you are going to lose, this is probably the perfect age at which to do it. A lifetime in business has left him financially secure and eight years as an MP have given him contacts - notably in China and central Africa - on which he now intends to build while working in a voluntary capacity. "I was disappointed to lose, but I don't feel losing has neutered me," he says. "I've picked myself up and I'm determined to develop other interests."

Trauma, a bereavement, a death in the family - all the defeated MPs talk about the initial shock of defeat in the same terms. In the blink of an eye they lose their job, income and status; they have a few months to wind down their case work and sack all their staff (Ashton emphasises how difficult it is for a defeated MP's secretaries and researchers too); then they begin the often challenging task of looking for work. What, after all, does being an MP qualify you for, apart from evading Jeremy Paxman's questions?

According to Ashton, a year after the 1979 election, 38 defeated Labour MPs were still seeking employment. "The idea that ex-MPs walk into a job is rubbish," he says. "They've lost their technological know-how; things have moved on; and the older they are, the more difficult it is for them to get a job." There is potential beyond politics for the losers - look at David Mellor, Edwina Currie and Michael Portillo - but a month after their world caved in, many of those expelled from the Commons on May 5 may not yet believe it. So if you see your ex-MP in the street, try to smile and say hello. Life outside Westminster can be cold and lonely.