With Labour leader Keir Starmer taking over as prime minister after 14 years of Conservative control, history was made today in the United Kingdom.

The newly appointed prime minister stated that the electorate had voted "decisively for change" and that he would uphold those results during his statement outside his new residence at Number 10 Downing Street.

According to the polls, the House of Commons has elected the most female members ever, in addition to a record number of LGBTQ+ and state school educated Members of Parliament.

When the House of Commons returns, you can expect to see at least 242 female MPs in the new government (220 female MPs were elected in 2019 when the proportion of female MPs reached 34%, the highest in parliament to date).

While the likes of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, the leader of the UK House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, and former prime minister and South West Norfolk MP Liz Truss have been asked to bid ‘farewell’ to their seats, there have been some ground-breaking wins for other female politicians of note.

• Julia Buckley has become the first ever female Shrewsbury MP, taking the seat from Daniel Kawczynski, who had represented the area for 19 years.

• Rosie Wrighting has become Kettering’s first female MP, describing the win as the ‘absolute honour of her life’.
• Amanda Hack has become North West Leicestershire’s first female MP, bringing an end to Andrew Bridgen’s 14-year reign as MP for the constituency.
• Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer unseated Labour shadow cabinet member Thangham Debbonaire in Bristol Central. Her party won four seats overall.                                                                                       While there are victories to be celebrated for women, MPs Jess Philips and Shabana Mahmood recently spoke about the harassment they’ve faced during the general election campaign. Phillips beat Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre to maintain her seat in Yardley, while Mahmood pitted independent candidate and lawyer Akhmed Yakoob to the post in Ladywood.Ms Philips was met with shouts and boos from the crowd during her victory speech, and was forced to address the heckling, saying: ‘I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence.’
  
  ‘A young woman on her own delivering leaflets was filmed and screamed at by a much older man in the street,’ she said of one community activist’s experience, after she went out to canvass with Phillips and was filmed by people in the streets and had her car's tyres slashed.
  
  She went on to say that the country was ‘in desperate need and our politics [is] in even greater need of cleaning up and I thank everyone in this room for making a really good spectacle of proving that for me’.
  
  Mahmood also used her speech to highlight the abuse her her family faced during the election campaign, as well as those who campaigned for her.
  
  ‘A lot will be written about this campaign, and it should be. This was a campaign that was sullied by harassment and intimidation,’ she said, referencing the physical threats and harassment that were reported to the police. She called the She called the behaviour an ‘assault on democracy itself’ and said it was ‘never acceptable to intimidate and threaten’ people.