DO THEY SERVE?
Members of the House of Commons whose continued presence needs to be questioned.
Over time, Accountable Commons will examine further current MPs and raise questions about their suitability to hold office as representatives of the people.
MATT HANCOCK - No longer an MP.
Matt Hancock was elected Conservative MP for West Suffolk in May 2010 and was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 9 July 2018.
As with all MPs he is responsible first and foremost to his constituents - however, once accepting a ministerial post and thus becoming a member of the government, he then becomes responsible to the country as a whole.
On his watch, the NHS was effectively and in practice closed to all except those alleged to have suffered from COVID-19. He seemingly grasped with enthusiasm the powers the government gave to itself via the Coronavirus Act and imposed upon the people a raft of restrictions never seen before in the United Kingdom using Statutory Instruments to bypass parliament.
He resigned as Health Secretary after being caught having an extra-marital affair. Questions have also been asked about his handing government contracts to his friends.
He is no longer an MP.
Former Constituency - West Suffolk
Park Farm Cottage
Fornham St Genevieve
Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk
IP28 6TS
SIR KIER STARMER - Prime Minister
In 2008, Kier Starmer became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), holding these roles until 2013. For his role as Director of Public Prosecutions, he was knighted in 2014.
Parachuted into a safe Labour seat, Starmer became Shadow Minister for Immigration in 2015 before being appointed to the Shadow Cabinet in October 2016 as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Starmer was a vocal advocate for a second referendum on Brexit, saying he would have voted to remain. After Labour's defeat in the 2019 general election, Starmer was elected to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in April 2020.
As leader of the Labour party he has become known for flip-flopping and jumping on trendy bandwagons, rather than adopting firm, principled standards.
He became Prime Minister following the General Election of 2024.
Constituency - Holborn & St Pancras
No address listed
ED MILIBAND - Energy Secretary
This is the man who in 2015 led the Labour Party to what was its worst general election defeat since 1987 (since beaten by Jeremy Corbyn's result in 2019). He had shifted the party well to the left, making it unnecessary for his successor, Corbyn, to have to make a case against centrism and compromise.
More helpful to Corbyn than Labour’s prevailing ideological current were its rules to elect the party leader, which Miliband had changed in 2014 to one-member-one-vote. Members of the public could vote for Corbyn on payment of a mere £3.
This led to a wave of what Trotskyists called “entryism” on the left — with new hardline Corbyn voters flooding into the party — and the rest is history. Labour became unelectable.
In 1992, after graduating from the University of Oxford, Miliband began his working career in the media as a researcher to co-presenter Andrew Rawnsley in the Channel 4 show A Week in Politics. In 1993, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman approached Rawnsley to recruit Miliband as her policy researcher and speechwriter. After a period as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, he became one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidants and Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers.
Constituency - Doncaster North
No address listed
SIR GAVIN WILLIAMSON
Williamson was elected as Member of Parliament for South Staffordshire at the 2010 general election. He served in David Cameron’s second government as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport prior to being appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister in October 2013. From 14 July 2016 to 2 November 2017, he served as Chief Whip of the House of Commons in the Theresa May-led Government.
Williamson served as Secretary of State for Defence from November 2017 to 1 May 2019, when he was dismissed as Defence Secretary, following a leak from the National Security Council; Williamson denied leaking the information about Huawei's potential involvement in the British 5G network. After supporting Boris Johnson’s campaign to succeed May as Conservative Leader, Williamson quickly returned to the Cabinet as Education Secretary in July 2019.
He oversaw the masking of children in schools and faced allegations of bullying, resulting in his resignation as a Government Minister.
Constituency - Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge
Jubilee House, 59 Wolverhampton Road, Codsall, South Staffordshire, WV8 1PL