First words give grounds for optimism in our new MPs

Of the 335 new MPs elected last month, 139 have made their first speeches in the three weeks that the House of Commons was sitting before the summer recess. I have watched or read all of them, and they give a good idea of the kinds of people who will influence this Labour government.

The overall standard has been high. In recent parliaments, there has been a disparity between the two main parties, with new Conservative MPs tending to be more impressive and to come from more varied backgrounds than Labour ones. Keir Starmer has pushed hard to raise the quality of Labour selections and, on the evidence so far, he has succeeded.

One theme that was more prominent than in the past was the need for more civility in public life. The convention is that maiden speeches — and they are still called that, despite woke — are a chance to pay tribute to predecessors, including defeated opponents of another party. This means they are usually gracious and bipartisan, but these speeches often went beyond that, noting that trust in politics was low and how important it was that MPs should set an example by disagreeing agreeably.

Matthew Patrick, the new Labour MP for Wirral West, put it best when he made three promises in honour of the late Frank Field, MP for the Birkenhead part of the Wirral: “My commitment is to listen in good faith to arguments made in good faith. My commitment is to change my mind when it is right to do so. And my commitment is to stand up for the things that I believe in, so that others might do the same.”

Associated with this were the tributes frequently paid to House of Commons staff, particularly those who had worked so hard to help new MPs find their way and settle in. I don’t remember hearing so many of those before.

Another theme that seemed more marked than in the past was the endless references to representing “my home”, “where I was born and brought up” and “where I live”. The preference for local candidates is stronger than ever. That helps reinforce the powerful impression gained from listening to maiden speeches that MPs really are “sent to Westminster” to represent a place — but it shouldn’t be taken too far and, fortunately, it hasn’t been yet because parties need to be able to draft in talented outsiders as well.

That tension between local and national priorities lay beneath the political content of many of the speeches. A remarkable number of new Labour MPs mentioned GB Energy, as if the name alone were enough to deliver cheap green electricity to every household in the country. Dave Doogan of the Scottish National Party, who has been an MP since 2019, was the first to lose patience with the idealism of Labour freshers: “I greatly fear that the new Labour government are getting a bit carried away with their own success and are sailing off from reality at some knots. I cite the nauseating ‘government of service’ hyperbole and the Potemkin energy company that is GB Energy.”

Labour’s net zero ambitions promise conflict with some new Conservative MPs. Harriet Cross, for Gordon and Buchan, complained about the government’s plan to cover agricultural land with “cables, pylons and other energy infrastructure”. Sarah Bool, for South Northamptonshire, used her maiden speech to object to a 2,000-acre solar farm: “Schemes like this will jeopardise our food security and scar our beautiful countryside, when there are other sensible solutions. We should be looking to industrial rooftops and transport corridors at a minimum.”

But it is not just Tories who will find themselves at the head of local opposition to renewable energy infrastructure. Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs in rural and semi-rural seats will find themselves under pressure too. And Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Greens, was so scarred by accusations of hypocrisy for opposing pylons in his Waveney Valley constituency, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, that he could only refer to them in his maiden speech as “the infrastructure proposal” and said all he wanted was a “proper options assessment”.

Nor is it just energy infrastructure that is going to cause trouble in the new parliament. Several Conservatives used their maiden speeches to declare their opposition to Labour’s national housebuilding targets. Alison Griffiths, the new MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, said: “Today I stand before the House to discuss an issue of utmost importance to my constituents: opposition to inappropriate development, and the preservation of our green spaces.”

Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff and now MP for West Suffolk, said he was not against new housebuilding “but...”. He said: “We need attractive family homes in the right places.”

Gregory Stafford, for Farnham and Bordon, said: “We must not build more houses until infrastructure catches up.”

And some of the 72-strong contingent of Lib Dems straddle the nimby-yimby divide awkwardly. Olly Glover, the Lib Dem MP for Didcot and Wantage, said in his maiden speech: “I commend the government on their commitment to genuinely affordable housing, but ask them to bear in mind that residents would be more supportive of housing growth were the health, education, and transport facilities needed to support it delivered in parallel.”

This will be one of the battle lines of this parliament. One other subject that came up again and again in maiden speeches, somewhat unexpectedly, was the importance of special needs education and the terrible state it is now in. Given that these speeches came from new MPs of all parties, it may be that there is a chance of progress with multi-party support.

There have been many fine speeches, a sprinkling of decent jokes, some moving stories of personal and family struggle — and we are not even halfway through the new MPs. If they mean it about working together to earn the trust of the people again, it may be that, for all that we tend to think that the politicians of yesteryear were greater than those of today, the politicians of the future will step up to serve us well.