Mel Stride: Labour can be ousted after just one term despite ‘wide’ majority

Getting Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves out of Downing Street is an ambition Shadow Chancellor is determined to make reality.

The 63-year-old talks with urgency of overturning Labour’s giant majority and bringing the curtain down on the Starmer era.

“We have to be utterly determined to turf this Government out in a single term,” he says. “I really believe that it can be done.”

With the just one point behind Labour in the latest Techne poll, he wants to be part of one of the greatest political comebacks of the modern age.

Sitting in the shadow cabinet room on a dark January evening, he points out that Labour won less than 34 per cent of the vote in the summer election.

“It is a wide majority but it is very thin,” he says. “I think with time we have got every chance of succeeding in coming back.”

His optimism and personal warmth won him fans in the Tory leadership election. He also impressed the winner, with handing him the sought-after position of Shadow Chancellor.

The new Conservative leader, he insists, has what it takes to lead the party to triumph.

Mrs Badenoch is known for her combativeness during Prime Minister’s Questions but Mr Stride insists her “fearless” approach to “saying what she believes” should “not be confused with any inability to actually listen very carefully to what other people feel and think and take that into account”.

“I have been hugely impressed with her,” he says.

His key job is opposing Ms Reeves and he has embraced this challenge with gusto. He talks with horror at what has happened to the economy in the half-year since Labour took power.

As if describing a crime he has witnessed, he says: “They’ve heaped taxes on to business – taxed the living daylights out of them, talked down the economy and they seem now to be slightly shocked and surprised the economy is in a very bad place.

“We’ve seen growth killed stone dead.”

The former Work and Pensions Secretary is also appalled that pensioners were not warned before the election that they risked losing their winter fuel payments if Labour won power, and that farmers were not put on alert they could face an inheritance tax raid.

“I think there is a pattern here of having said one thing in opposition and then going on to do something very different and I think that has certainly eroded trust in this Government,” he says.

His journey to the Cabinet – and now the Shadow Cabinet – began at his parents’ kitchen table. He remembers them talking about one of the two 1974 elections in tones which made it clear this was a truly important event that would affect their lives.

Mr Stride’s father was trying to make a success of his insurance business. While the boy did not appreciate the differences between the political parties he says he did understand that the election “mattered”.

He won a place at Portsmouth Grammar School, thrived and then became the first person in his family to be accepted to go to university.

A lasting memory is the moment an envelope was thrust into his hands.

“It was an offer of a place at Oxford University. I grabbed that opportunity and I ran with it as far and as fast as I possibly could, and I never looked back.

“I had Maggie Thatcher’s words ringing in my ears, that if you have a good education the whole world is set out before you.”

However, he did hit a speed bump very shortly after starting his studies in chemistry.

“When I got there I found to my horror you spend most of your time in the laboratories, it seemed to me, crushing crystals into test-tubes full of water.”

One day, after “crushing these wretched crystals for about an hour,” things quickly came to a crunch. He looked down at his work and said: “I can’t do this any more.”

The young Mr Stride strode to his tutors and said: “I’m really sorry but it’s the wrong subject for me. I’ve decided I’m much more interested in politics and history and economics and all that stuff.’”

Economics captured his imagination in a way ground crystals never could. He joined the Oxford Union and found himself in the company of future Tory leaders William Hague and .

The pair were “pretty much exactly as they are now”.

He says: “William Hague was a great debater, a great orator, a great speaker, a very intelligent man who I think got a blistering first class degree – all the things you expect – and is now the Chancellor of the university.”

Even then, Mr Johnson had perfected a “slightly flustered” manner but was “intelligent, engaging” and – no surprise – “charismatic”.

Mr Stride won the presidency of the union but instead of jumping into politics forged a career in business, setting up his own enterprise which specialised in publishing, conferences and exhibitions.

It was not until 2010, at the age of 48, that he entered Parliament as the MP for Central Devon.

His parents had both known economic hardship and left school in their mid-teens. He describes the support they gave him to go to university as “an act of great love, actually”.

And he talks with delight about life with his three daughters, his wife Michelle and their pet beagle Peggy.

“I’m blessed by being surrounded by women in our home which is really nice,” he says. “I really enjoy it.

“I have a brother who I love dearly but nonetheless I always secretly wanted a sister, actually. I never got my sister but I have daughters which is very special.”

There is no time for him to indulge in his hobby as a qualified tour guide for sites including the Tower of London, Windsor Castle and Stonehenge.

Right now, he is focused on consigning the present Labour Government to the history books.