Who is Gen Kitchen? Labour’s new MP for Wellingborough

Gen Kitchen has just become the first Labour MP for Wellingborough since Peter Bone turned the seat blue in 2005.

The Northamptonshire constituency was the second most marginal seat for Labour in Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, with Paul Stinchcombe winning by just 187 votes.

And Labour figures are confident that Ms Kitchen’s win, beating Tory candidate Helen Harrison by more than 6,000 votes, puts the party on course for a landslide under Sir Keir Starmer later this year.

Amid the fallout of another dramatic by-election win for Labour The Independent asks, who is the new MP for Wellingborough?

Ms Kitchen was born in Northamptonshire to navy parents who think the idea of her becoming an MP is “a bit mad”.

But the 28-year-old, who went to a local state school during the last Labour government, is determined to fight for the constituents she says have been “left behind under Conservative leadership”.

She graduated in 2016 from Queen Mary University of London with a degree in history and politics and spent the next seven years working in the charity sector. Her most recent role was running philanthropy for a children’s health charity.

Ms Kitchen is also a former councillor in Newham, London, where she was responsible for economic recovery in the area as well as boosting residents’ health.

She is set to join the House of Commons in the coming days as one of its youngest MPs.

An avid Taylor Swift fan, with tickets to the popstar’s Eras tour in May, Ms Kitchen has earned the nickname “zen Gen” among her campaign team, partly due to her penchant for spa days and partly for her ability to remain calm throughout the gruelling campaign.

Ms Kitchen had been hoping to fight to become Wellingborough’s MP in this year’s general election. But, midway through her honeymoon in Suffolk, disgraced ex-MP Mr Bone was found to have indecently exposed himself to a staff member and trapped him in the bathroom of a hotel room.

It became obvious a by-election was coming and, with fish and chips in one hand and her two dogs in the other, Labour’s regional director rang her and she came back early.

Ms Kitchen was helped to victory by the Tories’ selection of Mr Bone’s girlfriend Ms Harrison to fight the seat for them. And she was likely boosted by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which stood ex-MEP Ben Habib in the seat as part of its war on the Conservatives.