Jerome Mayhew is a Conservative of the old establishment type, the son of a Cabinet minister who has not yet matched his father's reach, now defending one of the most fragile seats in the party. His majority fell from nearly 22,000 to 719 in a single Parliament.

Jerome Patrick Burke Mayhew was born on 11 April 1970, the son of Patrick Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, who served Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Attorney General from 1987 and then as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1992 to 1997, two of the most senior legal and constitutional offices in government. His mother is the Reverend Jean Mayhew OBE. This is the continuation of a political family, not an outsider's arrival.

He was educated at Tonbridge School, the University of Edinburgh and Cranfield, and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1995, practising in personal injury and litigation for eleven years. In 2006 he joined the adventure firm Go Ape, becoming its managing director from 2009 to 2018, and he retains a shareholding. He later became a director of an agricultural company in his constituency, working in farming and green energy. His mother was born and raised in Broadland, giving him what he calls a lifelong connection to the area.

He succeeded Keith Simpson in 2019, selected late after the original candidate withdrew, and won with 59.6 per cent of the vote and a majority of 21,861. The 2024 result, on the expanded Broadland and Fakenham boundaries, was a different world: 16,322 votes, 33.0 per cent, and a majority of just 719 over Labour, with Reform on 17.9 per cent. A collapse from 21,861 to 719 is among the most dramatic of any returning Conservative MP.

In government he was a parliamentary private secretary at Defra from October 2022. Since the 2024 defeat he has served as Shadow Minister for Business and Trade and then for Transport, doubling as an Opposition Whip, and has sat on the Environmental Audit Committee and the Public Accounts Commission. As shadow transport spokesman he has pressed on the Ely Junction rail capacity scheme and called the decision to cancel the Manchester leg of HS2 "very odd". His clearest local win was helping see off plans for an asylum facility in the constituency.

At 56, with the Mayhew name, the Go Ape record and a shadow transport brief, he operates in his father's considerable shadow, a generation on from when the family name carried Cabinet weight. The Go Ape shareholding and the agricultural directorship sit on his register of interests in a rural seat he must now defend on a knife edge. Whether the transport scrutiny and visible constituency work can rebuild a majority of 719 into something durable, or whether the seat slips away at the next election, is the question that now defines everything.