The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

20 under 40: meet parliament's rising stars

We've selected 20 of the brightest MPs in parliament
- and they are all under the age of 40.

By New Statesman Published 23 September 2011 11:27

The last election saw the biggest rookie intake since 1997, with 227 new MPs arriving. The New Statesman, in association with Insight Public Affairs, has compiled a list of 20 MPs aged under 40 who we think have the brightest prospects. The list excludes frontbenchers, although some are sure to be future ministers and even prime ministers. As last week's NS leader noted: "so far, the 2010 generation has shown itself to be independent-minded and politically precocious, with a reassuring tendency to defy the whips".

Here are profiles of each of our rising stars. Who did we miss out? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Rushanara Ali (Lab) - born 1975

Luciana Berger (Lab) - 1981

Rehman Chishti (Con) - 1978

Stella Creasy (Lab) - 1977

Michael Dugher (Lab) - 1975

Sam Gyimah (Con) - 1976

Duncan Hames (Lib Dem) - 1977

Matthew Hancock (Con) - 1978

Tristram Hunt (Lab) - 1974

Jo Johnson (Con) - 1971

Gregg McClymont (Lab) - 1976

Lisa Nandy (Lab) - 1979

Priti Patel (Con) - 1972

Dominic Raab (Con) - 1974

Rachel Reeves (Lab) - 1979

Rory Stewart (Con) - 1973

Jo Swinson (Lib Dem) - 1980

Elizabeth Truss (Con) - 1975

Chuka Umunna (Lab) - 1978

John Woodcock (Lab) - 1978

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16 comments

Fri, 2011-09-23 20:05 — swatantra nandanwar

.... and the only come out at night.
Chisti is a turncoat if ever there was one, and he has as much charisma as John major.

Fri, 2011-09-23 20:34 — Demotivatrix (not verified)

David Lindsay, I don't think I've ever met Rachel Reeves, but I can tell you you are talking absolute codswallop about her accent. Her parents were teachers who sent her to a comp in Beckenham/Penge, which doesn't make her _that_ middle class, and she seems to have got into Oxford on her own merits. And to be honest for someone from SE London, her accent isn't that pronounced anyway.

Fri, 2011-09-23 21:56 — David Lindsay (not verified)

Probably not, Demotivatrix. But she obviously sounds like a character from Only Fools and Horses to the writers on the New Statesman. Very telling, all round.

Wed, 2011-09-28 07:49 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

ALL THESE PEOPLE WANT TO PROMOTE A DREAM.
THE DREAM IS WHAT THE PEOPLE MAY WANT
THE PEOPLE WANT TO GET PAID FOR
PROMOTING THIS DREAM

fuck yer dream

Wed, 2011-09-28 08:01 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

For I am ME

Wed, 2011-09-28 10:22 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Come on all you rising stars why not debate with me on the New Statesman?

Are you scared?

Of course you are.

Tue, 2011-09-27 03:00 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

How come all of these people have only worked in desk jobs? Has any of them worked in a factory or in a shop or on a farm or on a building site? Don't you think that might be important?

Tue, 2011-09-27 03:03 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

And do any of them have any children?

Tue, 2011-09-27 14:04 — Fraziel1

@maxinemf, could not agree more. First time I have heared her speak and regardless of politics I thought she was very poor indeed and came across as being a bit dim to be honest. Why she is on this list is beyond me. Oh, wait, is it because she is considered by some to be attractive? She did also come across as a typical rather unpleasant right wing tory.

Fri, 2011-09-23 11:39 — Jules Evans (not verified)

You missed out Kwasi Kwarteng! Big omission - he's gonna be PM one day.

Fri, 2011-09-23 12:50 — swatantra nandanwar

Great to see about half are BAME. So the next PM but one is likely to be BAME. But its not going to be Priti Patel.

Fri, 2011-09-23 13:01 — maxinemf

Did you see PP on QT last night. What an odious politician. She favours bringing back the death penalty. I must say I found her debating skills very poor indeed.

Mon, 2011-09-26 13:54 — frenetic

Luciana Berger was parachuted in to a working class street in Liverpool,despite much local resistance. What has she done to be included in this list?, She was just interviewed by Andrew Neil at the L/P conference and sounded like an automaton reading off the 'new generation' crib sheet...

Fri, 2011-09-23 18:02 — David Lindsay

Congratulations to the New Statesman on ruining 20 careers by profiling 20 MPs under 40 and calling them "the best of their generation".

It is not about the Staggers: wherever this had appeared, that would have done for them. Which is a pity, because several of them are impressive, even if several of them are anything but. And even if at least eight of them (exact dates of birth are not given) are younger than I am, which is always a bad sign.

Supposedly complimentary references to being a former speechwriter for John Reid (anyone who needs a speechwriter shouldn't be in politics), or to having been handpicked by John Hutton, or to being a protégé of George Osborne, are quite beyond parody, though no less amusing for that.

But other things are decidedly more pernicious, and really not funny at all. Most of these people could just as easily have been members of either of the other parties, and can reasonably be suspected of having pulled off the old Denis Healey and Virginia Bottomley: applying to all three parties while promising to join the first one to offer them a safe seat. Most of them have hardly or never worked outside politics.

Rachel Reeves is affecting a working-class accent if, Lewisham or no Lewisham, her parents were schoolteachers who sent her to Oxford and the LSE. People as middle-class as that have local and regional accents in the North, but not where she is from. Her much-trumpeted "state school" also deserves further investigation, there being, to say the least, state schools and state schools, above all in London.

I mean this a compliment when I ask exactly what political difference there is between Rushanara Ali and the moderate Left, pro-life anti-warrior whom she removed from Parliament? But, and I only ask, is she as good a speaker as George Galloway? And has she ever been anything like a milkman?

But it was Rehman Chishti who really jumped out of the page. "He ran unsuccessfully against Francis Maude as a Labour candidate in 2005 while working as an adviser to Benazir Bhutto [a close friend of George Galloway's], then leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, a role he played from 1991 - aged just 21 - until Bhutto's assassination. He defected to the Conservatives in 2006 and became an aide to Maude as Tory chairman." He is now MP for Gillingham and Rainham. All together now: "Islam is our Faith, Democracy is our Policy, Socialism is our Economy, All Power to the People." As they say, Respect.