A Breakdown Of The Number Of Female MPs Now In Parliament And The Key Women To Remember
History has been made today as the United Kingdom woke up to a new government, with Labour leader Keir Starmer becoming Prime Minister following a 14-year Conservative rule.
During his speech outside his new home at Number 10 Downing Street, the new PM said that people had voted ‘decisively for change’, and that’s exactly what he has promised to uphold.
In addition to welcoming in a record number of LGBTQ+ and state school-educated MPs, the polls saw the highest number of female lawmakers being elected to the House of Commons.
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When the House of Commons returns, you can expect to see at least 242 female MPs in the new government (220 female MPs were elected in 2019 when the proportion of female MPs reached 34%, the highest in parliament to date).
While the likes of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, the leader of the UK House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, and former prime minister and South West Norfolk MP Liz Truss have been asked to bid ‘farewell’ to their seats, there have been some ground-breaking wins for other female politicians of note.
Rachel Reeves has become Britain's first ever female Chancellor. The MP for Leeds West and Pudsey has served as Labour's Shadow Chancellor since May 2021. Better yet, her younger sister Ellie is Labour’s deputy campaign chief, so they'll also become the first sisters to sit around the Cabinet table. ‘I think a few more girls from [comprehensive school] Cator Park and a few less boys from Eton in the Cabinet would be quite a good thing for our country,’ Reeves told the Mirror in an interview during the campaign.
Rachel Blake has become the first ever Labour MP to win the seat of the Cities of London and Westminster since its creation in 1950.
Angela Rayner has been appointed deputy prime minister and received her own department as secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities taking over from Michael Gove.
Monica Harding has made history in Esher and Walton becoming the first non-Conservative to represent the area in over a century - and its first ever female MP.
Julia Buckley has become the first ever female Shrewsbury MP, taking the seat from Daniel Kawczynski, who had represented the area for 19 years.
Rosie Wrighting has become Kettering’s first female MP, describing the win as the ‘absolute honour of her life’.
Amanda Hack has become North West Leicestershire’s first female MP, bringing an end to Andrew Bridgen’s 14-year reign as MP for the constituency.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer unseated Labour shadow cabinet member Thangham Debbonaire in Bristol Central. Her party won four seats overall.
While there are victories to be celebrated for women, MPs Jess Philips and Shabana Mahmood recently spoke about the harassment they’ve faced during the general election campaign. Phillips beat Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre to maintain her seat in Yardley, while Mahmood pitted independent candidate and lawyer Akhmed Yakoob to the post in Ladywood.
Ms Philips was met with shouts and boos from the crowd during her victory speech, and was forced to address the heckling, saying: ‘I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence.’
‘A young woman on her own delivering leaflets was filmed and screamed at by a much older man in the street,’ she said of one community activist’s experience, after she went out to canvass with Phillips and was filmed by people in the streets and had her car's tyres slashed.
She went on to say that the country was ‘in desperate need and our politics [is] in even greater need of cleaning up and I thank everyone in this room for making a really good spectacle of proving that for me’.
Mahmood also used her speech to highlight the abuse her her family faced during the election campaign, as well as those who campaigned for her.
‘A lot will be written about this campaign, and it should be. This was a campaign that was sullied by harassment and intimidation,’ she said, referencing the physical threats and harassment that were reported to the police. She called the She called the behaviour an ‘assault on democracy itself’ and said it was ‘never acceptable to intimidate and threaten’ people.
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