The first Member of Parliament after the seat's creation in 2005, was the then
Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Gordon Brown; who had previously represented
Dunfermline East from
1983 to
2005, and later succeeded
Tony Blair as
Prime Minister in 2007. At the
general election of 2010, Brown was re-elected as an MP, but was defeated as prime minister, and soon resigned as
Leader of the Labour Party. He announced that he would continue to serve as an
Opposition backbencher, and did not retire from the Commons until the
2015 general election, which he did not contest. On that occasion, the
SNP won parliamentary representation in the area for the first time, in line with the party's landslide victory throughout Scotland at that election. In 2017, Labour regained the seat from the SNP, with
Lesley Laird winning over the SNP incumbent
Roger Mullin by 259 votes. Laird was appointed
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland less than a week later on 14 June 2017. In 2019,
Neale Hanvey unseated Laird with a majority of 1,243 votes. Hanvey was suspended from the SNP before the election for use of anti-Semitic language in social media posts. Although Hanvey was suspended from the SNP, he was still listed as such on the ballot and his victory is recorded as an SNP gain from Labour. Hanvey defected from the SNP to join the new
Alba Party in late March 2021, becoming Alba's second MP after
Kenny MacAskill of
East Lothian. Labour regained the seat at the 2024 election, with
Melanie Ward defeating the SNP candidate by a majority of 17.7%. The incumbent MP, Neale Hanvey, stood as the Alba Party candidate, receiving just 1,132 votes (2.8%). == Members of Parliament ==