Naushabah Khan was elected Labour MP for Gillingham and Rainham on 4 July 2024 with 15,562 votes (37.8 percent) and a majority of 3,972, defeating Conservative Rehman Chishti who had held the seat for 14 years. She is the first woman ever to represent the constituency. She was born in the now-defunct All Saints' Hospital in Chatham on 26 February 1986 and grew up in Gillingham. She attended Fort Pitt Grammar School in Chatham and Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester. She is not a parachute candidate. She grew up in the streets she now represents.

She studied at the University of Birmingham (BA) and BPP University (Graduate Diploma in Law). She worked as Director of Policy and Communications at St Mungo's, one of the UK's largest homelessness charities. She served as a Medway councillor for Gillingham South from May 2015 to December 2024, nearly ten years. From May 2023 to September 2024 she held the cabinet role for Housing and Property.

Since entering Parliament she was appointed to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee in October 2024 and was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Cabinet Office in September 2025.

On 11 May 2026 she resigned the PPS role and publicly called for Keir Starmer's removal as Prime Minister. Her resignation statement was direct: "The message from last week's elections was clear: the Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the public." She called for "new leadership, so that we can rebuild trust and deliver the better future that the British people voted for." She added: "I did not enter politics to stand by while we fail." She was one of more than 80 Labour MPs who called for Starmer to go following disastrous local election results. Jess Phillips resigned as safeguarding minister the same weekend.

Khan's resignation was part of a coordinated Labour revolt in May 2026 that constitutes the most serious internal challenge to a sitting Labour Prime Minister since the attempted coup against Corbyn in 2016. A first-term MP resigning a PPS role after eight months and publicly demanding the Prime Minister's removal is not a nuanced calculation about political positioning. It is a break with the leadership.

She has spoken publicly about experiencing racism online as an MP and about imposter syndrome in her first week in Parliament.

Reform UK took 8,792 votes (21.4 percent) in 2024. A 3,972 majority with Reform at 21 percent and a PPS resignation behind her means Khan is defending a marginal seat having publicly broken with her own Prime Minister. Whether that act of independence helps or hinders her in a constituency where frustration with Westminster is the dominant political emotion remains to be seen.

Khan's strengths include genuine Chatham and Gillingham roots (born, raised and educated locally), first woman to represent the constituency, nearly ten years as a Medway councillor with housing cabinet experience, St Mungo's homelessness policy expertise, Housing Committee placement, and the willingness to resign a government role over principle. Her weaknesses include a 3,972 majority making this one of Labour's most vulnerable Kent seats, a public break with the Prime Minister that forecloses any return to government under Starmer, the risk that Reform UK consolidates the protest vote in a constituency where anti-establishment anger is strong, and a parliamentary record still too short to judge beyond the resignation. At 40, with the housing expertise and the local roots, she has a viable long-term career as Gillingham and Rainham's MP. Whether the Starmer revolt helps or destroys that career depends on who leads Labour next.