Claire Hazelgrove: From pints with the PM, to Filton and Bradley Stoke's first ever Labour MP
Watch Lucy McDaid's report here.
Claire Hazelgrove gained a majority of exactly 10,000 votes in July, and is Filton and Bradley Stoke's first ever Labour MP.
Sir Keir Starmer's first major speech of 2024 was at the National Composites Centre at Bristol and Bath Science Park in Emersons Green.
The constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke had been chosen to host the then Labour leader's first visit of the new year for a reason - it was a seat he needed to win.
Sitting on the outskirts of Bristol in South Gloucestershire, Filton and Bradley Stoke had only ever been won by the Conservatives and represented by one man - Jack Lopresti.
It made sense that the future PM would kick off a big election year with a visit to a typical battleground seat. It was here, and in similar seats across the country, that he needed to convince fairly loyal Conservative voters to switch to Labour.
So he delivered a big speech in Emersons Green, where he was flanked by the local parliamentary candidate, Claire Hazelgrove.
And he would be back again.
During the general election campaign, after visiting Thangam Debbonaire in nearby Bristol Central, Starmer dropped in to the Beaufort Arms pub in Stoke Gifford.
Hazelgrove said: "It was all very natural. It was the 200th anniversary of the first pint being poured.
"What an excuse to finally have a moment's break from the campaign trail. It was lovely, people got to have those personal conversations, in a really non-manufactured way."
Debbonaire, the former shadow culture secretary, would go on to lose her seat to the resurgent Green Party by more than 10,000 votes in what was a huge blow to the party.
But Hazelgrove, who had been campaigning for more than two years, took the Filton and Bradley Stoke seat from the Conservatives with a convincing 10,000 majority.
She said: "It was completely surreal. A huge privilege, but I did keep asking people, 'what is the majority?' I was always schooled a long time ago in politics that there's no such thing as a number that ends in a zero, let alone all of those ones.
"I had to check myself online in the end. It's a huge privilege to have that level of trust and enthusiasm."
Hazelgrove first stood for parliamentary election in 2010 in Skipton and Ripon, where she was based at the time. She was 19 years old and Labour's second youngest candidate in history.
She proudly says she comes from a family of teachers, NHS workers and RAF service members. She didn't come from a family of politicians, but says she was always drawn to public service.
She said: "I wholeheartedly believe that politics can be and should be an ultimate force for good. We can pass laws, we can make change happen. That doesn't mean it's easy as we all well know, but it does mean that it's possible. We need people who see the world that way."
Since joining Parliament, Hazelgrove has joined a backbench group of more than 50 Labour MPs that is vowing to put pressure on Keir Starmer to "unlock Britain's untapped potential" and build the promised 1.5 million new homes across the country.
But one of the issues new Labour MPs, like Hazelgrove, could face in their constituencies is fierce opposition from constituents to planning applications.
She said: "For me it's about housing but also infrastructure and green spaces. The three parts are really, really important. We've seen it not go right in this area before.
"But we do need to tackle the housing crisis.
"We've got to build the more affordable, high quality, sustainable homes with the infrastructure and green spaces needed to tackle this. It's a good example of the change that is going to take time but is the right change for the long term."
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