Michael Shanks is the Labour MP for Rutherglen, and was first elected to parliament for the predecessor constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton West in a by-election on 5 October 2023.

In the 2024 general election for the Rutherglen constituency, Shanks received 21,460 votes, representing 50.5% of the vote share. The Scottish National Party (SNP) candidate, Katy Loudon, came second with 12,693 votes (29.9%), while the Reform UK candidate, David Stark, secured 2,685 votes (6.3%). Shanks was duly elected with a majority of 8,767.

The Rutherglen constituency is located in South Lanarkshire. The seat was re-established for the 2024 general election. It comprises the towns of Rutherglen, Cambuslang, Blantyre, Bothwell and Uddingston.

Shanks succeeded the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier as the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West in 2023. Ferrier sat as an independent towards the end of her tenure as an MP.

Political Career

Shanks currently serves as minister of state for energy at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (since September 2025). He previously served as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero from July 2024 to September 2025.

Prior to the 2024 general election, which saw Labour returned to power after 14 years in opposition, Shanks served as shadow minister for Scotland (November 2023 – May 2024).

Shanks was elected to parliament at the October 2023 Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. The by-election was triggered by a successful recall petition against the incumbent MP, Margaret Ferrier, following her suspension from the House of Commons for breaching Covid-19 rules

Shanks was elected with 17,845 votes (58.6%) and a majority of 9,446 over the SNP candidate in second place. The result represented the first Westminster byelection in which the SNP lost a seat it was defending.

Shanks sat as a member of the House of Commons Scottish affairs select committee from January to May 2024.

Shanks delivered his maiden speech on 15 November 2023 during a debate on violence reduction, policing and criminal justice.

In it, he said: “Before I qualified as a teacher, I spent several years working with young people involved in gangs and offending. They were not bad people; they were not born bad. They were people often without hope that their lives could be anything more than what they currently experienced.

“When you lose hope, when your aspirations are limited by your experience, when you are unemployed or excluded from school, is it any wonder that a gang starts to seem like a reasonable option?”

He added: “As a Labour MP, the roots of our founder Keir Hardie are in Lanarkshire. It was in Rutherglen, then called Mid Lanarkshire, in 1888 – just a short century before I was born – that he first stood for election.

“For SNP Members, the area also saw one of their most famous by-elections in 1967: the election of Winnie Ewing, whom we sadly lost just a few months ago.”

Before his election to parliament, Shanks resigned from the Labour Party on the day of the 2019 European Parliament election.

Setting out his reasons for resigning, Shanks stated: “I’ve spent years working with different faith groups, particularly around Christian and Jewish relations.

“I know a lot of Jewish people and they were genuinely scared and hurt by the culture that had built up and that wasn’t being tackled by the leadership [under Corbyn].

“It was a deeply personal decision, I found that I found it difficult to look people in the eye who were Jewish and who genuinely couldn’t understand why I would remain in the party.

“It was that the party leadership at the highest levels weren’t tackling it. I took a personal decision to leave, which was incredibly difficult to do.”

Shanks rejoined the party when Keir Starmer became leader.

Shanks stood unsuccessfully for the Partick West ward in the 2012 Glasgow City Council election. He also stood unsuccessfully for the Glasgow Kelvin constituency at the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, and for the Glasgow North West constituency at the 2017 general election.

Political views

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Shanks 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

Shanks voted against 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): Shanks 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.

Palestine

LFPME: Shanks has been listed as a member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME). The organisation’s stated aim is to promote peace and justice in the region through the application of international law and respect for human rights.

Before Politics

Born in Ayrshire on 4 March 1988, Shanks studied at the University of Glasgow, where he gained a degree in history and politics.

He completed a Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) at the University of Glasgow. He subsequently worked as a modern studies teacher at Park Mains High School in Erskine.

Personal Life

Shanks has served as a trustee of Glasgow Disabled Scouts, Epilepsy Scotland and Interfaith Glasgow.

He is a member of the General Teaching Council for Scotland.

Trivia

In January 2022, Shanks completed a project to run along all 6,143 streets in Glasgow.

He began the running project during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 and finished the challenge on 5 January 2022 in George Square.

Shanks documented the project in an online journal. He gathered information from people during his runs to write a book on the social history of Glasgow. Shanks is said to have been inspired by Hugh MacDonald’s 1854 book Rambles Round Glasgow.