Sam Carling

Sam Carling was elected Labour MP for North West Cambridgeshire on 4 July 2024 with 14,785 votes (33.3 per cent) and a majority of just 39 (0.1 per cent) over Conservative Shailesh Vara, after a recount. He is the Baby of the House and the first British parliamentarian born in the 21st century, and his win went viral on TikTok; he woke, he said, to "messages from friends telling me I was all over social media."

Born in County Durham in 2002 and raised in Crook, which he calls "quite a deprived part of the north east," in a "totally apolitical family," he was brought up a Jehovah's Witness, an organisation he describes as "a high control religious group," and left at the age of 11. He has spoken against the Jehovah's Witnesses in Parliament and called for mandatory child abuse reporting laws covering such organisations, the most politically significant thread of his story. He says the cancellation of his A level exams during the pandemic politicised him: "in many ways it was that experience that politicised me."

He studied science at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was JCR President and joint chair of the Cambridge University Labour Club, and was an MPhil student in Pathology at the time of his election. He served on Cambridge City Council for West Chesterton from 2022 to 2025. The constituency takes in southern Peterborough, and he works closely with Peterborough MP Andrew Pakes on city issues, with priorities in NHS dentistry, transport and investment in the area.

He sits on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (since January 2025) and has served on the Renters' Rights Bill and English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill committees. He called his first year "a baptism of fire" and praised collaborative committee work: "I wish the public could see that more. It's not all about shouting and blaming each other."