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3 days ago
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Neil Duncan-Jordan’s new parliamentary office is at the top of a steep staircase in a maze of corridors just behind the speaker’s house, with a sweeping view of the Thames. The space is decorated with mod posters and jazz vinyls; he has Miles Davis playing on the record player.
“I want it to be me,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Because this place isn’t me, is it? Working-class people didn’t come here very often in the past. Now there’s many more of us and we bring our traditions. Somehow you’ve got to try and make this part of you.”
Duncan-Jordan, the first Labour MP for Poole, had never expected to be sitting here. But he has made a big impression, speaking out against government decisions on winter fuel payments and the refusal of compensation for Waspi women.
He is one of Labour’s 33 so-called “bonus MPs” who arrived in Westminster from non-target seats. Some have their own WhatsApp group to navigate the surprise of leaving behind jobs and families to sit in the House of Commons.
Sam Carling, the Labour MP for North West Cambridgeshire, was studying for a master’s when he got elected aged 22. “During the campaign you just have tunnel vision. And when you win, you have to move house and start a new job, essentially start a small business recruiting staff,” he said.
The new MPs are from different wings of the party. Duncan-Jordan joked that they were all acutely aware they may not get long in the job. “My neighbour [another MP] said people like you are dangerous because you’re not after a career. You weren’t supposed to be here, and you’ve got nothing to lose.”
Weeks into the job, he created an early day motion opposing the government’s decision to cut the winter fuel payment. “I didn’t speak out against the government on a winter fuel payment because I was trying to be difficult or nasty,” he said. “I’ve had 30 years of campaigning on means testing and in support of universalism. I just think it’s wrong. I was prepared to say something. I haven’t been elected just to do what everybody else tells me to do.”
Arriving in Westminster by accident does not always mean MPs will be rebellious. Carling said he was personally more sanguine about the government having to do unpopular things early on. “We’ve got a lot of mess to fix. We may not be popular initially,” he said.
Terry Jermy, who unseated Liz Truss in South West Norfolk, is among those whom Labour HQ is surprised, but delighted, to see in Westminster.
“I put zero time into thinking about what would happen when I got here. And it took me a few months to feel comfortable in the role,” he said. But he thinks having MPs from backgrounds like his – rural poverty, farming – should give No 10 a much broader perspective on the policies it is enacting.
“I am the Labour MP with the most number of [constituents] using heating oil. People used the winter fuel allowance to pay for that,” he said. “All my family work in farming and agriculture. I find myself talking about farming and I’m like: oh, OK, you know, there’s something I can offer here.”
Changes to inheritance tax had been difficult in his constituency, he said. “I think [local farmers] were expecting somebody to rock up who doesn’t know anything about farming, and they’ve all gone away like: OK, we had some wrong preconceived ideas about a Labour MP – and they’ve found that quite reassuring.”
Labour’s election campaign had a reputation for being ruthless, especially around some controversial selections, and target seats had dedicated organisers, polling and a nationwide demand for activists. But in non-target seats it was a scratch campaign with a hardcore of local members.
The party nationally would demand that many candidates in non-target seats were “twinned” with winnable seats and spend time campaigning there, bringing their activists there instead. In extreme cases, the party turned off the canvassing data for seats deemed non-winnable. Some won anyway.
But many of the “bonus MPs” told the Guardian they had fun with their relative freedom, constructing their own ad vans or doing crowdfunding campaigns.
“We had to gear up very quickly somewhere that’s never been Labour before,” said Laura Kyrke-Smith, the MP for Aylesbury. “I think it’s fair to say there were some in the party that didn’t think we could win. But actually it meant there were a lot of people locally that were very invested in winning. And I think it does add a nice energy to it when you’ve got a lot of people stepping up for themselves.”
Duncan-Jordan reckons he started out with “about a dozen” local activists. He overturned a 19,000-strong majority to win by 18 votes. “I’ll be absolutely honest, we might not be able to do that again,” he said. “Everything aligns. The moment is just absolutely right. The candidate’s right. The mood of the country’s right. The timing’s right.”
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Jermy ran a crowdfunding campaign for leaflets – “it’s Terry or Truss” – to drum support to unseat the former prime minister. “People were so angry,” he said.
The inexperience on his campaign team meant Jermy was never quite sure if his team was running the data correctly when they saw Tory villages coming out for Labour. But they weren’t wrong. “I got there at 2am and I knew I’d won, because it was so clear.”
Carling also had to run his own data for the campaign, sitting at a laptop at his election count assessing the numbers.
Prof Phil Cowley, of Queen Mary University of London, said the last slew of “bonus MPs” came in 1997. Some were slightly more rebellious – about 34% rebelled in the first term, he said. But many were not one-term wonders in the end. “I might be pointing out as a whip that lots of those unexpected MPs in 1997 hung on in 2001,” he said.
Others who spoke to the Guardian have their own issues they hope to campaign on – some of which have been uncomfortable for the government.
Kyrke-Smith hopes to have a voice on the government’s planning reforms, and to sound a note of caution from Aylesbury’s experience. “There’s been 13,000 houses built under the previous Tory government without enough facilities or services or infrastructure – that came up again and again,” she said.
“I think there’s a lot to learn from places like Aylesbury. They totally get that we need more houses, but they really need it to be done in the right way so that it’s matched by infrastructure and services.”
She also hopes to do her own work on postnatal mental health, perhaps even amending legislation, after the suicide of a friend who had just had a baby.
All said they felt the only way they could hold on to their seats after the next election was to deliver tangible change locally. “I think I want to do as much as we can as quickly as we can,” Kyrke-Smith said.
Duncan-Jordan said: “I’m absolutely convinced that the way to win the seat again is to be a good local constituency MP. So sorting people’s problems out on the ground, being visible, being accessible. Nothing pompous, just a regular bloke. And that connects with people.”
