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.
There are more fresh faces in the House of Commons than any new parliament in over 50 years, and they now make up more than a third of the country’s representatives. In some ways, it’s the most diverse parliament Westminster has ever seen.
But who are these green politicians, ready to make their mark on Britain?
Gender
There are more women in parliament now than at any time in history.
Labour now has 190 female MPs — more than the total number of Conservative MPs — 93 of whom are in parliament for the first time. Women now make up 41 per cent of the new government and 46 per cent of the parliamentary Labour party.
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The new cabinet is almost half women, accounting for ten of the 21 senior cabinet members. Rachel Reeves’s appointment as chancellor of the exchequer makes her the first woman to ever hold this role.
Ethnicity
Sir Keir Starmer’s new government is also the most racially diverse in history.
In total, there are now 88 people of colour in parliament, up from 66 in 2019 and just 15 in 2005, when Labour last won an election.
Of the 231 new Labour MPs, 201 are white, 17 are of Asian descent, three are black and ten are mixed race. Thirteen per cent of Labour’s new MPs are people of colour, compared with 14 per cent of all MPs — up from 10 per cent of MPs elected in 2019.
This is broadly similar to the population of England and Wales, in where 18 per cent of people are not white, according to the 2021 census.
Age
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The average age of the new parliament is 46 — the youngest on record and a five-year drop from the 2019 average of 51. But the new Labourites are even younger, with an average age of just 43.
The new “baby of the house”, Sam Carling, secured a win for Labour in Cambridgeshire North West for the first time since the constituency was formed. He’s the first MP to be born this century and one of six Gen Z MPs in the cohort.
On the other end of the spectrum is new Birmingham Selly Oak MP Alistair Carns, who is the oldest of the new Labour entrants at 68 years old. However, at 12 years younger than the returning Conservative MP Roger Gale, he doesn’t yet qualify as the eldest on the benches.
The cabinet team are predictably older, with an average age of over 50. Louise Haigh, the new secretary of state for transport, is the youngest around the cabinet table, aged 36.
Education
The new MPs also come much closer to representing the general population in terms of their educational backgrounds. Just 7 per cent of people in the UK attend private schools, but 41 per cent of Conservative MPs under the previous government went to fee-paying schools.
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In the new parliament, 73 per cent of Labour MPs attended non-selective comprehensive schools, compared with 40 per cent of Conservative MPs and 58 per cent of Liberal Democrat MPs.
Just 4 per cent of the new cabinet attended an independent school, despite 40 per cent attending either Oxford or Cambridge university, according to research by social mobility charity The Sutton Trust.
In other ways, the new government sticks with tradition. Since 1937, every prime minister who has studied at an English university has attended the University of Oxford. This excludes John Major, James Callaghan and Winston Churchill, none of whom attended university, and Gordon Brown, who attended university in Scotland.
