Dr Jeevun Sandher is the Labour MP for Loughborough, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Sandher won 17,249 votes, representing 40.8% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Jane Hunt, received 12,289 votes (29.1%), while the Reform UK candidate, Andy McWilliam, secured 7,204 votes (17.0%). Sandher was duly elected with a majority of 4,960.

The Loughborough constituency is located in Leicestershire, East Midlands. The constituency, created in 1885, is considered a national bellwether seat, having elected an MP from the winning party in every general election since February 1974. Notable previous MPs include former Conservative cabinet ministers Nicky Morgan (2010-2019) and Stephen Dorrel (1979-1997).

Political Career

Sandher currently serves as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. A PPS acts as an unpaid parliamentary assistant, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs. The role is widely regarded as the first step on the ministerial ladder. Although they cannot speak for the government in debates, a PPS is bound by collective responsibility and becomes part of the so-called “payroll vote”, expected to support the official line in all divisions. Sandher was appointed to this role in July 2026, following the Labour leadership contest and Andy Burnham’s elevation as prime minister.

Sandher served as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Business and Trade from September 2025 to July 2026.

In July 2025, Sandher formed the Living Standards Coalition – a group of Labour MPs that aimed to develop and promote policy ideas that directly reduce everyday costs for households, particularly in areas such as food, energy, housing and childcare.

In an open letter published upon its founding, addressed to Keir Starmer, the MPs wrote: “Our constituents will ask one question at the next election: did this Labour government make me better off?”

They added: “To raise living standards, we support government interventions that will help to increase incomes and lower costs.”

In a post to social media at the time, Sandher (the group’s convenor) said: “Getting living standards rising is core to our Labour values. It’s what we were elected to do.

“That is why over 100 Labour MPs have set up the Living Standards Coalition.”

In further comments to the Guardian, Sandher added: “It’s not just about the electoral challenge, but also about our values…

“You’ve got young graduate renters going to the Greens because they find their housing costs are really expensive. And you’ve got people in post-industrial areas going to Reform because they’re finding everything else really expensive, as well as finding it difficult to find good jobs. And both sides are pulling the ‘I want radical change’ lever.”

In April 2025, Sandher was among the group of MPs placed on a sanctions list by the Russian government. The measure barred them from entering Russia and was presented by Moscow as a retaliatory response to the UK’s stance on the invasion of Ukraine.

In the wake of the 2024 general election, which saw Labour returned to power after 14 years in opposition, Sandher was appointed by 10 Downing Street as a “mission champion” for the East Midlands – a role intended to cut across departmental boundaries and support Labour’s programme for “national renewal”. These “missions”, first set out in 2023 and subsequently given less prominence, included boosting economic growth, reducing NHS waiting times, tackling crime, establishing a publicly owned clean energy company and expanding educational opportunity.

Sandher has sat as a member of the House of Commons Treasury committee (2024-2025).

Sandher delivered his maiden speech on 4 September 2024 during a debate on the Budget Responsibility Bill.

In it, he said: “My story does not begin in Loughborough. I was not born there – unlike my neighbours, who are now my friends, and who have made it my home. My story instead begins in rural Punjab, 4,000 miles away, where my father was born almost 70 years ago. His chances of dying before his fifth birthday were one in four.

“Today, a child born in the same place is around nine times less likely to die. That is what economic growth means. It means less suffering, it means less misery and it means less death. That is why I became an economist: to build prosperity and to lessen misery.”

He added: “I rise to speak at the most difficult time for our communities and our nation since 1945. Our communities are in crisis. Wages in my constituency are £10,000 lower than they would be had we grown at new Labour rates.

“The divides caused by deindustrialisation have widened from cracks into chasms, with young men who used to leave school and get good jobs now 20% less likely to get any job; in our most deprived neighbourhoods, life expectancy falling before the pandemic; more than any fact or figure, the despair, the despondency and the anger; across and beyond our shores, war in Europe once more, with democracy in danger; and, most seriously of all, a planet that is burning.”

Political views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Sandher was one of 175 Labour MPs who nominated Bridget Phillipson for the party’s deputy leadership in September 2025. The election followed the resignation of Angela Rayner, who stepped down as deputy prime minister and deputy party leader after an investigation into her tax affairs. It marked the first time since 2007 that Labour had held a deputy leadership contest while in government.

Phillipson, the serving education secretary, was widely viewed as the candidate favoured by Downing Street and the party leadership. She secured 175 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), comfortably exceeding the 80 required to reach the final ballot. She was ultimately defeated by Lucy Powell.

Factional identity and party tradition

Common Endeavour: Sandher has been identified with the Common Endeavour group, a collective of Labour MPs from the party’s “broad centre” which set out a series of essays alongside the Fabian society focused on how “Labour can apply its values to the problems we face in the second quarter of the 21st century.”

The Fabian Society pamphlet, Common Endeavour: Building a Stronger Britain (April 2026), defined four generational challenges: “affordability, capacity, security, and solidarity.”

The group’s platform, set out in the essays, included calls for a fundamental reappraisal of the UK’s international alliances, reduced strategic dependence on the United States and the pursuit of a closer, Swiss-style relationship with the European Union, including an “emergency brake” on freedom of movement.

The essays were penned by the Labour MPs Liam Byrne, Anna Gelderd, Andrew Lewin, Luke Murphy, Anneliese Dodds, Alex Baker and Calvin Bailey, alongside Jeevun Sandher,

The introduction to the group of essays referred to the phrase used in Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution, which argues that the movement achieves more by “the strength of our common endeavour”.

In a New Statesman article, the MPs rejected the “embrace of ethnocratic division and plutocratic Thatcherism” by their political opponents.

The piece added: “Their values will make us weaker by dividing us ever further. They would have us draw away from like-minded allies in Europe and leave us more dependent on mad fossil fuel-obsessed dictators from abroad.

“And they’d indiscriminately deport our friends, neighbours, and those that sit by our relatives’ bedsides as they suffer. They’d make our nation weaker, because they do not think we achieve more together than we achieve alone.”

In his contribution, Sandher argued that the nation’s economic struggles were the result of decades of structural decline, tracing the current position back to the 1980s shift from a “worker-based economy” to a “capital-based economy” heavily centralised in London and the greater south-east.

Sandher argued that for a double-income couple to afford the basics, they each need to earn approximately £35,000 (or £70,000 together) – a collective income that 80% of the country does not meet. He called for a rebalancing of the economy, focusing on the creation of high-quality, non-graduate jobs in sectors such as the green transition, construction and social infrastructure “which all pay decent wages, must be done physically in Britain, and cannot be done by machines abroad.”

Sandher added: “In the short term, people need relief through redistribution. The government has shown the way by reducing energy bills by £150, expanding free childcare, and extending the Warm Homes Discount.”

Sandher further warned that the “frustration and fury that has been the response to life becoming unaffordable is tearing this nation apart.”

He wrote: “We can build a nation where each of us – every worker in every community – can afford a decent life. Our Labour values demand it; hard analysis shows us how to build it…

“To build a stronger Britain, we have to end the capital-based, London-led economy of the post-Thatcher years and build a worker-based, community led economy where life is affordable for all. In doing so, we can create a nation where all have a stake – because the nation has a stake in them.”

SERA: Sandher has been listed as a member of the Socialist Environment and Resources Association (SERA) – a socialist society affiliated with the Labour Party. Founded in 1973, SERA is the party’s official environmental campaign group. The organisation campaigns on a wide range of issues, including renewable energy, biodiversity, air quality and the transition to a green economy. SERA describes its member MPs as “champions for the environment”.

Fair elections APPG: Sandher is listed as a supporter of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for fair elections – a cross-party group of MPs and peers that campaigns for electoral reform. The group’s stated aims include replacing the first past the post (FPTP) voting system with a form of proportional representation, eliminating “dark money” and “undemocratic influence” from politics, and countering disinformation.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Sandher voted in favour of the government’s flagship welfare bill at second reading. The vote came after ministers agreed to significant concessions to avoid defeat via a mass rebellion of Labour MPs on 1 July 2025.

Assisted dying

Sandher voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at both second reading (November 2024) and third reading (June 2025).

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Sandher voted in favour of a backbench amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in June 2025. The amendment, which was passed by a majority of 242 votes, removed women from the threat of prosecution for ending a pregnancy at any stage. As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.

Before Politics

Dr Jeevun Gurpreet Singh Sandher was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, in September 1990 into a British Punjabi Sikh family.

Sandher studied economics and philosophy at the University of Nottingham, graduating in 2012. He obtained a master’s degree in economic development and policy analysis from the same institution in 2013.

He was awarded a PhD in political economy at King’s College London in 2022.

Sandher’s career centred on economic policy. He worked as an economist at the Department for Work and Pensions from 2014 to 2015 and at the Treasury from 2015 to 2016.

Sandher served as an economic adviser to the Somaliland Ministry of Finance from 2016 to 2018. He was head of economics at the New Economics Foundation from 2022 to 2024.

Personal Life

In December 2024, Sandher announced his engagement to fellow newly elected Labour MP Louise Jones (now Sandher-Jones). They met while campaigning in January 2023.

They married in August 2025.

In a post to Facebook, Sandher-Jones said: “Over August, I married my wonderful partner, Jeevun Sandher!

“We had a beautiful wedding that brought together traditions from our two different heritages which made it all the more special as we start the next chapter of our shared future.”

Trivia

Sandher runs a substack where he writes about politics and policy.