After last week’s general election, which returned Keir Starmer as prime minister in a Labour landslide, parliament looks like a very different place.
The country returned more new MPs than existing ones on Thursday, with 335 successful candidates taking seats in the House of Commons for the first time. And some of the most familiar faces from the previous parliament lost their seats, with a record number of cabinet members defeated.
But for most politicians, even those who have held high-profile positions, it is the work for their constituents that they remember most.
While Jacob Rees-Mogg held the roles of leader of the House of Commons and secretary of state for business and played a prominent role during Brexit, he says it is constituency casework that he valued most.
The former North East Somerset MP lost his seat to Labour. “The achievement of which I am proudest, working with a group of MPs across parties, was successfully campaigning for a very expensive drug, Brineura, to be approved by Nice to treat Batten disease,” he said.
“There is a boy in North East Somerset alive today in a stable condition who could live a natural lifespan. He probably would not have survived this long otherwise. Children with Batten disease rarely survive beyond their early teenage years. This is the most important thing I have ever done.”
Grant Shapps was first elected to parliament in 2005, almost 20 years ago, and first became a minister under David Cameron in 2010. Over the years he held the positions of transport secretary, business secretary and defence secretary, and – very briefly under the Liz Truss administration – home secretary.
His Welwyn Hatfield seat fell to Labour at the general election. Looking back on his parliamentary career, he says a couple of achievements stand out. “Two things, at either end of my ministerial career,” he said. “About 12 years ago I secured a big upgrade to the Streetlink system by introducing it as an App. This has enabled members of the public to bring help and assistance to people sleeping rough. It helped thousands off the streets and will have rescued and even saved lives along the way.”
He added: “Then within the past six months, I secured 2.5% of GDP for defence. This tens of billions extra for our national defence is critical in a more dangerous world. It means are armed force personnel would get the equipment they need and our country will be better protected from the likes of Putin in the future.
“This is of course at risk if Labour do not quickly commit to the timetable to deliver the extra £75bn. But as an achievement, I think that better defending the realm is the most important thing I have ever done … so far.”
Last Thursday, Labour gained 36 seats from the Scottish National party in Scotland. Alison Thewliss, the SNP’s home affairs spokesperson, had represented Glasgow Central, which was abolished under boundary changes.
Last week, she contested the Glasgow North constituency, but was defeated by Labour, who gained the seat. “The biggest achievements over these past nine years have been those quiet wins for my constituents – the cases that don’t end up in the press, but are life-changing,” she said.
“People who have gotten money back from the DWP and HMRC, families who have been brought to safety and reunited despite the best efforts of the Home Office to deny them. There are many campaigns I’ve been involved in and speeches I’m proud to have made, but it’s the work for my constituents that I will remember the most.”
Hannah Bardell, the SNP’s spokesperson for digital, culture, media, and sport, also lost her Livingston seat to Labour. “There’s a couple of constituency cases,” she said, reflecting on her greatest achievements, including that of Lola Ilesanmi, who still sends her a birthday card every year.
“Her and her whole family were faced with deportation after domestic abuse because her husband had manipulated her to go on to his visa,” she said. “The husband wanted her little girl to go back to Nigeria to be cut, to be a victim of FGM, and the Home Office were trying to deport her and the whole family. We managed to intervene to stop that from happening.”
Another proud moment, she said, was helping to set up the parliamentary women’s football team. A video of her playing keepie-uppie went viral after she played football in the chamber with a group of female MPs.“That showed parliament in a different light,” she said. “It showed female parliamentarians doing something fun, cross party.”
Other MPs involved in the video wrote to the speaker to apologise, but “I didn’t because I didn’t have anything to apologise for, I felt,” she added.
One of the biggest shocks of Thursday night was in Leicester South, where Jonathan Ashworth, who had been expected to feature prominently in Keir Starmer’s new cabinet, lost his seat to the pro-Gaza independent Shockat Adam.
Ashworth said there were “three things” he was most proud of during his time in parliament: “Everything I did for children of alcoholics; working in the national interest through the pandemic; and playing my part in securing a landslide Labour victory.”
Ashworth highlighted a powerful speech in the Commons in which he told parliament his father had missed his wedding because “he felt he would embarrass me by being there” and that a few months later his father had died and he had had to fly out to Thailand to arrange a funeral.
“I will work with government to put in place a proper strategy for supporting children of alcoholics, on a cross-party basis,” he had told the house, “because quite simply, 2 million children are suffering, let’s send them a message that they should no longer suffer in silence.”
