After the biggest election landslide since 2001, 411 Labour MPs will take their seats on the green benches this week — 231 of them for the very first time.
Following the general election, the Labour Party has a huge new intake, gaining an extra 209 seats on its 2019 tally.
After the biggest election landslide since 2001, 411 Labour MPs will take their seats on the green benches this week — 231 of them for the very first time.
Here’s a few of the faces to look out for:
1.Al Carns
Al Carns is a Royal Marines officer, who is now the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Selly Oak.
He served in the military for 24 years in conflict zones across the globe and was awarded the Military Cross in 2022 for services in Afghanistan. He left the marines just weeks before the general election.
Carns has been appointed as the new Veterans Minister – although he will not sit in Cabinet but instead run the Office for Veterans’ Affairs with oversight from the Defence Secretary.
2. Miatta Fahnbulleh
Miatta Fahnbulleh joins Parliament as the new MP for Camberwell and Peckham – the seat vacated by the veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman.
Fahnbulleh’s family fled civil war in Liberia, settling in Britain. Having studied economics at LSE, Fahnbulleh went on to become director of policy and research at the Institute of Public Policy Research. She then headed up the New Economics Foundation think tank for six years, before heading into the Cabinet Office.
3.Yuan Yang
Former Financial Times journalist Yuan Yang is the newly elected Labour Party MP for Earley and Woodley.
Yuan was the Financial Times’ Europe-China correspondent. She was previously deputy Beijing bureau chief for the FT. Before that, she covered China’s tech sector and economy.
Coming from mainland China, Yuan’s parents brought her to England aged four.
As well as her journalistic work, Ms Yang was the co-founder of the Rethinking Economics campaign, which has the stated aim of “building a student movement to challenge, interrogate and renew the discipline of economics and related fields, for social and climate justice.”
She is now the first Chinese-born MP in the history of Parliament.
4. Zubir Ahmed
Zubir Ahmed is also considered a rising star within the Labour Party and has been elected as an MP for Glasgow South West.
Dad-of-two Dr Ahmed, a transplant and vascular specialist in Glasgow, has spent 20 years saving lives in the operating theatre.
He has made the NHS a key part of his campaign and has described the crisis in the health service as unprecedented.
5. Kirsty McNeill
Kirsty McNeill is the Scottish Labour MP for the Midlothian constituency. A former special advisor to Gordon Brown during his time in No 10, McNeill had risen to become one of the most senior figures at Save the Children UK.
She is also chair of the advisory board for Our Scottish Future, the think tank set up by Gordon Brown to present the positive and progressive case for Scotland’s place in the UK.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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