Bim Afolami is the Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, having first been elected to Parliament in 2017. He was reelected in the 2019 General Election with a majority of 6,895 over the Liberal Democrats.
His rural Hertfordshire constituency is found to the north of St Albans running up to the border with Bedfordshire, and covers the towns of Hitchin and Harpenden, as well as a number of surrounding villages like Redbourn. Once a safe Conservative constituency represented by the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Peter Lilley, this area of Hertfordshire has been tracking towards the Liberal Democrats in recent years, and three fifths of the population backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum. It contains a high number of London commuters.
Born in 1986, Afolami was educated at Eton and Oxford University. He worked as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields, and then as an executive at HSBC, before being elected to Parliament.
His father was a doctor who came to the UK from Nigeria, his mother was a pharmacist.
He is non-executive director of Apprentify, an organisation which helps provide apprenticeships to young people
Afolami opposed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum, and worked previously as an advisor to George Osborne. He supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership election, but is regarded as sitting more on the centre left of the Conservative Party.
Afolami likes football, supports Arsenal, and himself played football for Oxford University. He is married with three children.
Afolami resigned as a Conservative Party Vice Chair in July 2022 in protest at the continuing party leadership of Boris Johnson.
He is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Renewable and Sustainable Energy, and Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Group on International Conservation.
Email: bim.afolami.mp@parliament.uk
Website – www.bimafolami.co.uk/
Twitter – @BimAfolami
