New girl settles in at Westminster

Few new MPs on General Election night can have delivered on an election promise as speedily or quite as melodiously as the 30-year-old Tory, who snatched Oxford West and Abingdon from Lib Dem Dr Evan Harris by only 176 votes.

Having, on the way to the count, promised to sing on radio if she won, her polished rendition of Every Time We Say Goodbye was indeed a stylish way of saying ‘hello’ to the political big time. If only all Conservative election pledges could be kept with such consummate ease.

Two weeks into her new career, there has been precious little time to reflect on what she achieved that night at Abingdon’s Vale of White Horse Leisure & Tennis Centre.

She arrived at the Palace of Westminster to feel the political ground shifting under her feet as the frantic talks and deal-making got under way.

Never mind trying to find an office, for her and hundreds of new arrivals in the House of Commons, the main concern was finding out whether she belonged to the party of government or opposition.

“Before the count I had not slept for two days,” she recalled. But when she arrived at Westminster on the Monday, it was a question of finding somewhere to put down the lap-top while enjoying a front row seat as history was being made.

“We received our passes and were told what our phone extensions were, even though no offices were available. But there was a lot of discussion amongst MPs about whether we would be going straight back to our seats to fight another election.

“Normally when MPs are elected they know what their roles are going to be and how they will fit into the process. But, after this election, neither new nor long-serving MPs had any idea. But it really felt like this moment was going to be historic.”

Her first experience of a late meeting of the Conservative Parliamentary party more than confirmed that.

“David Cameron had been to Buckingham Palace. It was 10pm at night and he came in with George Osborne and William Hague to tell us about the initial agreement. It was an extraordinary meeting.”

At least the issue of which side of the chamber to sit had been resolved. So what if the new MP still does not have a secretary yet to help deal with the 200 letters a day that have begun to arrive from her constituents, along with another 200 emails, when she has already been invited for drinks at 10 Downing Street as a guest of her boss, the new Prime Minister.

A special favour from the Witney MP to welcome the new representative from his neighbouring constituency, perhaps?

“No. I think he is getting through the rota of new MPs. But it was my first drinks in No 10. It really felt like being on a film set. It was a chance for him to say ‘hello’ to us all. But it was nice for him to have won another seat in Oxfordshire.”

I mention to her that the last time I spent a day shadowing a newly-elected MP in his first week, it had, in fact, been David Cameron. That was back in June 2001. But it would have been easy for someone even with the political antenna of Jacqui Smith’s porn-on-expenses husband to recognise that the new member for Witney was a politician going places, with Mr Cameron already having been an ex-Conservative Central Office ‘goody-goody’ and adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

For all her youthful good looks and talk of “film sets” and being “a little overwhelmed” in the House of Commons chamber, it is striking that Ms Blackwood is also a newcomer who clearly knows her way around both the party and the Palace of Westminster.

She was once employed as a researcher for Andrew Mitchell, who Mr Cameron recently appointed as Secretary of State for International Development, and she has worked in the Conservative Party’s human rights commission, advising on human rights in foreign policy.

Like Mr Cameron, she was educated at Oxford University, is at ease with ordinary voters, is not overburdened with ideological baggage and has little trouble making friends with Lib Dems.

The party’s former leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, has clearly already been won over.

“I have not got lost yet,” recalled Ms Blackwood. “But last week I couldn’t work out how to get to the new Portcullis Building. Sir Menzies came over and said, ‘are you a new member?’. He ended up walking me all the way. An early example of the new spirit of co-operation.”

In truth there will be few Tories as appealing to Mr Clegg and his friends as Nicola Blackwood, who readily admits to being “quite a liberal conservative”, having done voluntary work with young people in Mozambique, Rwanda and Bangladesh and been a volunteer in addiction and mental health charities. No one could depict her as “a child of Thatcher”. She was, in fact, born in the year Margaret Thatcher came to power.

Little wonder that at the hustings in Oxford West and Abingdon, one senior local Lib Dem approached her to say, “why don’t you join us?”.

Like her boss, she has a deep personal attachment to the NHS, partly through her parents, who live in North Oxford and met at the Radcliffe Infirmary. Her mother is a former nurse, while her father still teaches medical students at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

When the family lived in South Africa, where Ms Blackwood was born, her father angered the Apartheid-era government by speaking up for the rights of the black community. He was not thrown out, she says, but it was made clear he should leave the country.

One of her most profound political experiences came during the 1994 South African elections, when her mother went to vote at South Africa House in London. Witnessing people weeping as they queued to vote made Miss Blackwood aware of how profoundly politics could transform lives, she recalls.

But for much of her teens she was preoccupied with her own personal struggle, after becoming seriously ill with ME.

“It started when I was 14 and became steadily worse. When I was 17, it meant bed rest for almost a year. It interrupted my A-levels and I had to be home-schooled. I suppose something like that makes you understand what it is like to struggle, when you can’t find a way out.”

It continued to affect her into her early 20s. “There was a moment in my third year at university when I was admitted to hospital. I remember telling myself that I was not going to be intimidated by my illness. I wasn’t going to care about the physical cost. It wasn’t the way I was going to spend the rest of my life.”

She steadily recovered. But did the long experience of illness affect her personality? “It made me less fearful of standing up and doing things that I wanted to.”

Having trained as a classical singer at Trinity College of Music from the age of 14, she went on to gain a first in music at St Anne’s College and an M.Phil in musicology from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Again like David Cameron, Ms Blackwood did not get involved in student politics at Oxford, choosing to spend part of a gap year volunteering with aid projects in the Middle East, which led to a role advising the Conservative international development team.

However her career progresses, she can already claim a place in history, having become the first woman in history to have been elected as an MP in Oxfordshire.

“I was amazed to find that out. But it was a bit shocking to find that it has taken until 2010 to get a non-male Oxfordshire MP. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new era. But there seem to be a lot more women there. The number of Conservative women has doubled, which is quite encouraging. For me, it is wonderful to represent my own area — the part of Oxfordshire where I’ve always lived.”

She regularly attends services at St Aldate’s church, and last weekend addressed thousands of Christians who attended the Love Oxford event, bringing together congregations from an estimated 40 Oxford churches.

While no one will ever be able to calculate the extent to which her Lib Dem opponent Dr Harris’s vote was damaged by a leaflet during the General Election campaign depicting him as anti-religious and “one of the most outspoken secularists in Parliament”, it is clear that the contrasting religious views of the candidates may indeed have been an unlikely election issue to some.

As the new coalition was being hammered into shape, Ms Blackwood and other new Tory MPs were attending an induction meeting, offering advice about case work and the workings of the parliamentary system.

The Henley MP, Dr John Howell, not long ago a new boy himself, having won a by-election when Boris Johnson stood down to become Mayor of London, was enlisted to offer guidance.

Inevitably, the issue of expenses — what MPs can legitimately claim and what they cannot — was very much to the fore, even if there appears to still be much uncertainty.

“It is a new expenses system for everyone, so inevitably there are some grey areas,” said Ms Blackwood. “No one can tell you how to do it because neither old or new members know.

“But I’m conscious that I must make sure there is no confusion about what I’m claiming. It will be right and fair and anyone looking at my expenses will be able to see that.”

At present her London base is the home of her younger sister, Anneliese, a barrister, who lives a short distance from Westminster.

Finding a place on the green benches in the House of Commons has been a little more challenging. She ended up having to sit on the stairs squeezed between a few MPs to see David Cameron take his seat next to Nick Clegg.

“There’s just not enough space. But I had a centre court seat. Looking across, it was striking to see the rows of Labour MPs wearing red ties. It was like they were in school uniform.”

On her own side, the mood she reports was full of anticipation and hope.

“I’ve not met anyone opposed to the coalition,” she told me, surely aware that it is only a matter of time before she does.

At least for the moment, it is the bright young singer from Oxford, not the old voices of the ‘nasty party’, who is in tune with the times and the Cameron-Clegg double act.