Interview - Julian Sturdy: Welcome to Westminster – it's a new world for rookie MP

But now York farmer Julian Sturdy will spend his working week at Westminster as part of the biggest intake of new MPs in recent memory.

Mr Sturdy, the newly-elected Conservative MP for York Outer, was one of 232 rookie MPs voted into office earlier this month, a huge group of novices who will make up more than a third of the House of Commons.

He is the first to admit his experience of life at Westminster is limited – but with his own result balanced on a knife-edge throughout the campaign, it seems planning for the aftermath was not a viable option.

"In a marginal seat like York Outer, there's very little preparation you can do for winning," the former Harrogate councillor says. "I suppose it's a sort of self-protection – you don't want to think beyond the election because you don't want to get too carried away and then see it all evaporate. All I was focused on was up to election night, and then I would take it from there."

Such unwillingness to tempt fate is understandable, but the reality is that for a 38-year-old crop farmer with a young family at home, victory has turned his life upside down.

The brutally fast turnover of the British Parliamentary system meant new MPs such as Mr Sturdy were due to report for work in Westminster just 72 hours after discovering they had won. He will be staying in his sister's spare room in south-west London for the next few weeks, until he finds a flat to rent.

"It's a huge change," he agrees. "For someone who's a Yorkshire farmer, and spends all their time in Yorkshire on the farm or campaigning in York Outer, to suddenly spending my working week from Monday to Thursday down in Westminster, it will be a huge change, obviously. But I am excited about it, and I do think it's important we have people going into Parliament who have got experience outside of the political circle."

That's certainly true of Mr Sturdy, for whom the trip last Monday to enrol as an MP – passport and utility bill in hand, to prove his identity – was only his second visit to the House of Commons. "Some new MPs have worked in the House before and been on numerous occasions," he says. "But for me it was a very exciting and new experience."

But the thrill of being elected has been tempered somewhat by the knowledge he will see considerably less of his family, working away as he will in London four days a week. "It is difficult," he admits. "But what's so important is to make sure you put time aside for family. You've got to say, 'Okay, it's a Sunday, I'm not doing anything political on this day'. I think as long as you do that then the children know that this is their time with Dad. I'm very conscious they mustn't feel pushed out because of it."

His wife Victoria is taking it all in her stride. The 38-year-old supply teacher says that after several years supporting her husband on the campaign trail, his election to Parliament comes as something of a relief.

"It's calmed down now, certainly," she says. "For the past two years there's been a lot of work. It has been hard, looking back, with the family and also campaigning with Julian. It was flat-out for the last 12 months – we've worked every single weekend. But it's been a great experience."

It's clear she has no worries about looking after the children while her husband is working in Westminster.

"For the last couple of years, he hasn't been around an awful lot, so I'm quite happy dealing with the children," she says. "In some ways, it will be easier now he'll be down in London and then here at the weekend. Before, he was coming home at 10 or 11pm and hadn't eaten, or he was coming back just as the kids were going to bed, and they'd get all excited and want to get up."

George, six, and Florence, four, understood their dad was involved in the election, though they were not allowed to stay up late to watch on the night itself – it was, after all, a school night.

"George is quite aware of what's going on, and could recognise the different leaders on television," Mr Sturdy says. "It was sort of done in a football terminology, I suppose – Daddy was supporting David Cameron. He understood that. I don't think he quite understands that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are now together – that's slightly harder to explain."

So is Mr Sturdy worried about missing out on aspects of his children growing up?"My love outside politics is sport, and my son has just started playing cricket early on a Tuesday night after school with a cricket club," he says. "So I'm going to struggle to see him in that, and that's a wrench. We'd been practising in the garden, and now he's going to be out doing that. But there will be times when the House is not sitting and I'm working in the constituency and I can do that sort of thing. "

He is not considering moving his family with him down to London. "We'd always agreed that if I ever was successful, then our main home would always be here on the edge of York," he says. "Yorkshire is my home, I was born and bred here, my children were born and bred in York – this is my home, and will always remain my home whether I had won or lost. I couldn't move out of Yorkshire. That's sacrosanct."