Brendan Clarke-Smith

In March 2020 Clarke-Smith was appointed to the International Development Committee.

He was selected as the Conservative party candidate for Bassetlaw in the December 2019 elections when the sitting MP John Mann stood down. He overturned a Labour majority with the biggest swing in the election, from a 4,852 Labour majority to a 14,013 Conservative majority. This is the first time Bassetlaw has been represented by a party other than Labour since Malcolm Macdonald won the seat in 1929. As one of the Conservative MPs who overturned Labour's so-called 'Red Wall' in the North and Midlands in the 2019 election, Clarke-Smith has varyingly been described by the press as part of "the Blue Collar Caucus" and a "Red Wall Tory MP".

During the 2019 general election Clarke-Smith said that food banks in the UK were being used both as a "top up" and as a "political weapon", saying it was "simply not true" that Britain is "some kind of country in crisis and in absolute poverty". When he was challenged over his comments he said it was not true that "people can't afford to buy food on a regular basis". Following the election he was named by The Guardian as one of the seven "most controversial" new Conservative MPs.

In December 2019, Clarke-Smith was reported to be one of the new members of the European Research Group.

Clarke-Smith campaigned to leave the EU in the 2016 EU referendum and was a member of the Bassetlaw Vote Leave campaign, which secured a 67.8% leave vote. In May 2019 he commented that leaving the EU offered the chance to create more opportunities for young people globally, saying "We’re not leaving Europe, we’re leaving the EU. It’s not just about Europe, we want to get out and be more in the world. Britain has a very important place in the world.”

Clarke-Smith contested the EU elections in 2014 and 2019 in the East Midlands region. In May 2019, Clarke-Smith overturned a Labour majority in Boughton and Walesby to be elected as a Councillor on Newark & Sherwood District Council.

Brendan Clarke-Smith (born 17 August 1980) is a British Conservative Party politician. He was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bassetlaw in the 2019 general election.

Clarke-Smith was born in Clifton, Nottingham in 1980. He grew up on a council estate in Nottingham and was the first member of his family to go to university, studying politics at Nottingham Trent University and gaining a PGCE in religious education. He became a teacher and later Head of an International School in Romania. At the time of his election to Parliament, he lived in Edwinstowe with his Romanian wife, who is a doctor at Bassetlaw Hospital. They have a four-year-old son.