Mark Sewards: meet the teacher turned Leeds South West and Morley MP
When Rishi Sunak called the election in May, Mark was forced to quit his job as a maths teacher at Cockburn Laurence Calvert Academy in Middleton.
“Kids would come up after lessons to ask me about being a candidate, and I would try and foster that interest where appropriate,” he explains.
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Hide AdIn July, he defeated big Boris Johnson backer Andrea Jenkyns to become the Labour MP for Leeds South West and Morley.
And then just weeks later, as he was still hiring staff and organising his constituency office, his second son Arthur was born.
“It’s been very intense and it hasn’t really lessened since I got elected,” he laughs.


Mark says he first got interested in politics on his paper round around Leeds.
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Hide AdHe used to read the politics sections of the Yorkshire Post and other publications before dropping them through people’s letterboxes.
He was then inspired by his teacher Simon Maguire in Morley, who taught history and politics.
“He was so engaging and serious about the content - I already had an interest in politics and that really pushed it on,” Mark says.
He became the first in his family to go university, and he quickly trained with Teach First.
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Hide Ad“As I was teaching,” he says, “some of the problems I saw in the school, through no fault of the school itself, became more acute over time.
“I had a choice - I could keep helping a few hundred kids at a time or I could get involved in government, get involved in the Labour Party, try and become an MP and help every child.”
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