A crossbencher is an independent or minor party member of some legislatures, such as the British House of Lords and the Parliament of Australia. They take their name from the crossbenches, between and perpendicular to the government and opposition benches, where crossbenchers sit in the chamber.
Mark Gino Francois is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rayleigh and Wickford, previously Rayleigh, since the 2001 general election.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
Daniel Robert Kawczynski is a British Conservative Party politician.
Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset since 2010. Now a backbencher, he served as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2019 to 2022, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency from February to September 2022 and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from September to October 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, Rees-Mogg previously chaired the eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) from 2018 to 2019 and has been associated with socially conservative views.
Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg is a freelance journalist whose focus is finance, economics, and European politics and was a British Brexit Party then Conservative politician during 2019 and into early 2020.
Stuart James Andrew is a Welsh politician serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Civil Society since September 2022 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities since October 2022. Andrew previously served as Government Deputy Chief Whip from 2020 to 2022, Minister of State for Housing from February to July 2022, and Minister of State for Prisons and Probation from July to September 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Pudsey since 2010.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which, for the first time, set in legislation a default fixed election date for general elections in the United Kingdom. It remained in force until 2022, when it was repealed. Since then, as before its passage, elections are required by law to be held at least once every five years, but can be called earlier if the prime minister advises the monarch to exercise the royal prerogative to do so. Prime ministers have often employed this mechanism to call an election before the end of their five-year term, sometimes fairly early in it. Critics have said this gives an unfair advantage to the incumbent prime minister, allowing them to call a general election at a time that suits them electorially. While it was in force, the FTPA removed this longstanding power of the prime minister.
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is a research centre at the University of Cambridge, intended to study possible extinction-level threats posed by present or future technology. The co-founders of the centre are Huw Price, Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn.
Christopher Charles Stephens is a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow South West since the 2015 general election. He has been serving as SNP Spokesperson for Justice and Immigration since September 2023.
Elizabeth Saville Roberts is a Welsh politician, currently serving as the group leader of Plaid Cymru in the House of Commons. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dwyfor Meirionnydd since the general election in 2015.
Abimbola "Bim" Afolami is a British Conservative Party politician. He has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hitchin and Harpenden since the 2017 general election.
Matthew Raymond Western is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Warwick & Leamington since the snap 2017 general election. He was re-elected in the 2019 general election.
Sarah Ann Jones is a British Labour Party politician. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Croydon Central since the 2017 general election. She currently serves as Shadow Minister for Industry and Decarbonisation as part of Labour's Shadow Department for Business and Trade team. Until September 2023, Jones was the Shadow Minister for Policing and the Fire Service.
Lloyd Cameron Russell-Moyle is a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician who was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brighton Kemptown in the 2017 general election. He retained his seat in the 2019 general election. He is a member of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus.
Lee Benjamin Rowley is a British politician and former management consultant serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government and Building Safety since 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Derbyshire since 2017. He previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Industry between 2021 and 2022.
The European Research Group (ERG) is a research support group and caucus of Eurosceptic Conservative Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom. The journalist Sebastian Payne described it in the Financial Times as "the most influential [research group] in recent political history".
Andreas Schieder is an Austrian politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019.
On the Future: Prospects for Humanity is a 2018 nonfiction book by British cosmologist and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. It is a short, "big concept" book on the future of humanity and on potential dangers, such as nuclear warfare, climate change, biotech, and artificial intelligence, and the possibility of human extinction.
Amy Callaghan is a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician who has been the member of parliament (MP) for East Dunbartonshire since the 2019 general election. She unseated the then Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, with a narrow majority of 149 votes or 0.3%, overturning her majority of 5,339 votes two years earlier. She has been SNP Health spokesperson since 2023.
