News / Politics
Charlotte Leslie: All alone in a sea of red
Following the general election, Bristol24/7 caught up with Charlotte Leslie for the third instalment of our five-minute interviews with all the city’s new or reelected MPs.
“I’m all alone – a sole smudge in a red sea,” says Charlotte Leslie, central Bristol’s only Conservative MP.
Although Labour may have closed in around her, Leslie saw her majority increase when analysts predicted a possible re-count in her Bristol North West constituency.
Now the former BBC researcher and lifeguard returns to Westminster after a remarkable national Tory victory which sees a fresh intake of blue MPs from around the country and boosts her seniority.
“Looking around, there are a whole lot of faces I don’t recognise,” she says on one of her first days back in the House of Commons. “You never feel senior here though, but certainly more experienced. I feel like I have come a long way since I was first elected five years ago.”
Leslie says her priorities back in Bristol now include making progress on reopening the Henbury Loop rail line and reexamining the future of Avonmouth Port, which has been the focus of air pollution complaints.
Nationally, although she won’t be drawn into any possible new positions in the government, she says she wants to continue to work on the idea of a Royal College of Teachers, to protect standards and raise the status of the teaching profession.
She feels the already simmering tension over the planned abolition of the Human Rights Act is unjustified, as a suggested Bill of Rights should “enshrine the laws in a more robust way”.
Finally, on an EU in-out referendum, she wants Britain to stay if the union can be “reformed”. “It is important to remember what the EU was formed for – a common market,” she says.
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