Steve Yemm

Steve Yemm was elected Labour MP for Mansfield on 4 July 2024, restoring a seat Labour had held from 1923 to 2017 before the red wall collapse. Born in January 1964 and a lifelong Mansfield resident, he read Applied Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, began as a research scientist, then moved into IT and software, and at the time of his election was Chief Commercial Officer at Optibrium, a Cambridge software company applying artificial intelligence in life sciences.

His political grounding is local and long: he chaired the Mansfield Constituency Labour Party for nine years from 2008 to 2017. In the 2011 Mansfield mayoral election he won the most first preference votes but lost by just 67 on second preferences to the sitting independent mayor Tony Egginton, a near miss that reads differently given he went on to win the parliamentary seat 13 years later.

The man he defeated was no ordinary incumbent: Ben Bradley, who had taken Mansfield in 2017 after Alan Meale's 30 years, was simultaneously leader of Nottinghamshire County Council and the Conservative candidate for East Midlands Mayor, one of the highest profile Conservatives in the region. Yemm beat him with 16,048 votes (39.1 per cent) and a majority of 3,485 (8.5 per cent), with Reform UK on 22.8 per cent. In January 2025 he called on the government to release surplus funds from the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme, a campaign aimed directly at Mansfield's retired mineworkers and their families. He sits on the Business and Trade Committee.