Jacob Young

Born in 1993, Jacob Young is one of the fresher faced MPs elected in 2019. He has lived on Teesside his whole life, studying chemical engineering at Teeside University, and has subsequently used his degree to follow in his father and grandfather’s footsteps in the petrochemicals industry. Young worked as a process operator for Chemoxy International Ltd, later becoming lead technician for the company. He has been a Conservative party activist since his time at university: he contested the Redcar and Middlesbrough constituencies in 2015 and 2017. Young has also had experience in local politics, serving as an elected Middlesbrough Borough councillor from 2017 to 2019. The constituency of Redcar has never before had a Conservative MP, let alone one with an assured 3,527 majority. Young’s staunch Brexit stance is sure to have been an influencing factor in his successful quest to overturn his Labour predecessor’s majority of 9,500, in a 66 per cent Leave-voting constituency. In 2020, he joined the European Statutory Instruments Committee. The same year, Young was elected as chair of the APPG on hydrogen. He is openly gay and is engaged to his partner.