“The work starts now. Tomorrow morning, or this morning.”

In the early hours of July 5, just minutes after he’d learned he was now the Labour MP for Swindon North, Will Stone said he’d always been ‘quietly confident’ that he would be able to overturn his Conservative opponent Justin Tomlinson’s 16,000 vote majority.

Entering parliament with a handy 4,000 vote majority Mr Stone said: “It’s not really me who has done this, it’s my team and in fact it’s the people of Swindon North who have overturned the majority, and I’m very grateful to them.

Asked what he hoped he’d be able to say about the new Labour government’s achievements, and his own in five years’ time, Mr Stone said: “The first thing Id want to be able to say is that the Labour government has delivered on its manifesto commitments.

“As for me, I’m passionate about improving mental health here in S2windon, so I want to have better facilities for that here.

“And I want to continue working with Smarter Swindon ,the group I set up to increase the number of people going on to higher education.

“That’s  something I want to be able to say was a success.”

He added: “There’s a long list of things to do here, I want to help get things like the new Oasis built, we need that back.”

And Mr Stone hopes that now there is a Labour government, two Labour MPs in Swindon and a Labour-led Swindon Borough Council, that might make ensuring improvements to Swindon are actually made becomes easier.

He said: “I don’t think it hurts. It’s not always been the case when we had a Conservative government, MPs and council, but I do hope it will make things easier to get done.

“I’m really keen to get to work and will start immediately, and I promise to work tirelessly for the people of North Swindon

After leaving the stage, the defeated incumbent, Justin Tomlinson, who had held North Swindon since 2010 said: “We’d run out of road. And as I said, there’ll be excuses made, and blame apportioned but there are no excuses, we lost as a team.

“I’m incredibly grateful to have been allowed to be the MP for North Swindon for 14 years. And when you go into politics you know that this is always possible.

“I’ve served for 24 years starting as a councillor, but now it’s time to start looking after my family.”