Andrea Jenkyns: 'I was always going to vote out because it is who I am'

LAST year she was the conqueror of Ed Balls, her victory over the then Shadow Chancellor one of the stories of a remarkable election night.

Months later at the Conservative party conference, she introduced Chancellor George Osborne who said her win had “capped off a night that no-one here will ever forget”.

But just over a year after her election victory, she now finds herself working to defeat her party leader in the biggest decision the country has faced in a generation.

As a still relatively new MP with a political career to consider, Andrea Jenkyns could have taken the easy way out over the EU referendum and remained neutral or declared for Remain to notionally support the PM but done little in the way of campaigning.

Instead, the Morley and Outwood MP not only declared for Leave but is also co-ordinating the Yorkshire campaign for Brexit.

She insists there was never any doubt over her choice and she “passionately” believes Britain should leave the EU.

“I’ve always been a Brexiter. I gave the PM and his team the heads up even before he came back with his deal that I was always going to vote out because it is who I am it is what I’ve always believed in. On the campaign trail [in 2015] the biggest things that came up were immigration and Europe and then council issues and the NHS so it is generally quite a Eurosceptic constituency.”

Ms Jenkyns is one of more than 140 Conservative MPs now campaigning against the Prime Minister in the referendum campaign but she is convinced the party will re-unite after June 23.

“The party will survive, I know it will, it’s not going to implode. It took us 18 years in the wilderness to form a majority government. I think people will remember that.

“We will pull together afterwards, we’ve got to, we’ve got a country to run haven’t we?”

Winding back 18 months ago, Conservative Party insiders were praising Ms Jenkyns for her hard work and determination but were talking down her chances of beating Mr Balls, the sitting Labour MP for Morley and Outwood.

Their main hope was that her active campaign would force Mr Balls to spend more time in his constituency and less drumming up Labour votes around the country.

Reflecting on the election in her office in Morley, Ms Jenkyns insists those thoughts were never shared with her and points to the campaign visits she had from both David Cameron and George Osborne.

But she admits to having her own doubts about whether she could win.

“I think like any candidate you go through a range of emotions, you get up some mornings and think ‘wow I’m going to do this’ but other days you think ‘can I really do this?’. You’re up and down like a yo-yo,” she says.

Election night was dramatic for Ms Jenkyns even before the result was declared as her mother fainted following a long day getting people to the polls.

And then at around 8am, as it became clear the Conservatives were heading for a majority, the result came and she had beaten Mr Balls with a majority of just 422 votes.

“I have to say Ed was incredibly gracious backstage. We’d only clashed once the whole two years. I’m a firm believer in not campaigning negatively, i’d rather be that community champion and try and be positive where I can so I never directly attacked him.

“The first thing I did besides smiling and breathing a sigh of relief - that funny picture where it looks like my eyes are popping out of my head, I hate that picture, I look bonkers really - it is that look of relief that two years on the campaign trail has paid off.

“Then I looked over at Ed and I could see Ed’s face and I thought to myself this is a man who has ten years as an MP, longer in politics anyway, he must be broken. I went straight over to him and whispered to him and shook his hand and said ‘I know we’re different parties, I’m obviously glad we won but I genuinely wish you well in whatever you do because I know this must be hard’.

“And he was so incredibly gracious and he turned round and shook my hand. ‘Andrea well done’, he said, ‘you’ve fought a fair campaign and you’ll make a good MP.’ So that was incredibly gracious of him really.”

She describes the following hours of media interviews and congratulations “quite surreal” and days later she found herself on the induction course in parliament.

“Every MP says it but its like that first day at work or first day at school really and I still now get lost at times even a year on.”.

“The first thing I did was email my mum from my [MP] email address,” she adds.

Ms Jenkyns has spent her first year as an MP campaigning on issues she has long championed including the future of high streets and also patient safety following the death of her father in 2011 from an infection acquired in hospital.

But she has also had to come to terms with the implications of being a public figure including seeing her relationship with a fellow MP scrutinised by the media.

Nevertheless, Ms Jenkyns insists she has no regrets about her decision to enter parliament.

“I don’t know if it has fully hit yet, which is bizarre. I had one of my friends say to me a couple of weeks ago ‘you’re not still a candidate, you don’t have to feel like the election is tomorrow’ because I am still full-on. It is probably part of my personality anyway.

“Even two weeks ago the division bell went to vote, I was at my desk signing letters and I sat there and smiled thinking ‘wow, this is still exciting one year on’.”