House of Commons Reshuffled
The United Kingdom (UK) elections are over. Britain has elected a new government, ousting Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party from power after 14 years.
The Labour Party led by Keir Starmer has formed the new government. The new prime minister has appointed his Cabinet, which includes a record 11 women MPs out of the total 22 ministers.
The Desi Celestials – The Tori Regime
Suella Braverman - Suella Braverman, the 44-year-old barrister who is of Indian heritage with a Goan-origin father and Tamil-origin mother apologised to the public for the Conservative Party’s performance over the last 14 years after winning the newly-created Fareham and Waterlooville constituency. Her hostility to immigrants cannot go unnoticed with her headline-maker speeches like ‘I would love to be having a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda.’
Priti Patel: Patel, 47, resigned as International Development minister in November 2017 over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials that breached diplomatic protocol. She campaigned to leave the European Union in 2016, and since leaving government has been an outspoken critic of former Prime Minister Theresa May's approach to Brexit. Patel, who also served as a junior Treasury minister, released a report on the British economy arguing for lower taxes and for a new Bank of England mandate more focused on asset price inflation and financial imbalances. She was first elected as a Conservative MP for Witham in Essex in 2010 and gained prominence in the then David Cameron-led Tory government as his Indian Diaspora Champion.
Claire Coutinho: Once the special advisor to Sunak, Claire Coutinho secured a win from East Surrey. Coutinho is a “Sunak loyalist”. She worked for the PM when he was chief secretary to the Treasury in 2019, then was his parliamentary private secretary after he became chancellor in 2020. Coutinho was also integral to his Tory leadership campaign in the summer of 2022. On paper, their backgrounds look remarkably similar: they are the children of immigrant parents of Indian origin who worked in the NHS (Coutinho’s father was an anaesthetist, her mother a GP), both went to private school (she was a scholarship student at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich, south London) and Oxford University (studying maths and philosophy at Exeter College), then did a stint in the City of London (at Merrill Lynch, then KPMG), before both entered parliament aged 34. And no one should confuse quietness with lack of ambition. After all, Claire Coutinho didn’t end up as Energy Secretary by accident.
Labour Party Entrants
Seema Malhotra held on to her Feltham and Heston constituency with a comfortable margin. She is the co-Founder & President of the Fabian Women’s Network and was elected as an MP from Feltham and Heston four times between 2011-2024. She has also acted as Shadow Minister for different departments. She admitted that “things aren’t going to change overnight” if Labour wins. “Everybody knows that. The country is so broken…But what we do have is hope, optimism and a plan to change what we can. To not get too focused on overall structures of government, but building the infrastructure we need to make sure that we’re starting to deliver from day one.”
Lisa Nandy: Lisa Nandy won with a big margin in Wigan. She worked as Shadow Cabinet Minister for International Development and was elected in the Parliament four times between 2010-2024. Nandy took her first degree at Newcastle University and then pursued an MSc in Politics and Government from University of Birkbeck. She worked as a Senior Policy Adviser at The Children’s Society from 2005 to 2010 and served as a Labour councillor in Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council from 2006 to 2010. She won for Wigan in 2010 and became the constituency’s first female MP and one of the first Asian female MPs.
Preet Kaur Gill: British Sikh MP Preet Kaur Gill defeated Tory first-timer Ashvir Sangha in Birmingham. She was the Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Public Health in September 2023. She is UK’s first female Sikh MP and was a social worker and a Councillor, and Cabinet Member for Public Health and Protection prior to entering Parliament.
Editor’s Note
East India Company ruled India for an entire generation of 300 years. Today, 26 Indian-orgina MPs have been elected to UK Parliament. This stands as the staunches example of an evolved democracy!
Keywords
#houseofcommons #indianoriginmps #sunak
