ANDREW Smith still clearly remembers the dramatic night he was elected as Oxford East's MP.

It was June 11, 1987, and by all accounts a torrid day for Labour.

The party had once again been clobbered by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher, but Mr Smith's victory here created a 'little red dot in a sea of blue'.

The Oxford constituency – before it was redrawn into Oxford East – had been held by the Tories for the better part of the last century, with the party's candidate Steve Norris beating Mr Smith with a majority of 1,267 in 1983.

But four years' later, Mr Smith turned it red.

"You never forget," the departing MP said in an interview with the Oxford Mail this week.

"I had lost narrowly in 1983 but since then we had geared up and learned lessons from that first campaign.

"We were at the count and they had the votes in bundles of 50, in big black dustbins. My bundles were flat at the top and Steve Norris' were piled up.

"I said 'we've lost again' and everyone could see that it didn't look good.

"Then they tipped them on the tabletops and suddenly, up in the gallery, our supporters started singing and chanting.

"They'd seen, when all the votes were out, that there was one more Labour row and my agent came running down the room and said 'Andrew, Andrew, we've done it! We're in by one thousand.'

"I went from despondency to elation. We had beaten Steve Norris by a little bit more than he had beat me in 83.

"And, of course, there were not many other Labour gains that year. If you drew a line from the Wash to the Severn, outside London there were just three Labour seats.

"I was a little red dot in a sea of blue, and, of course, that was to be the case for much of my career."

Mr Smith, who had been a city councillor for about 10 years before then, credits his victory to the community-focused politics he has always championed.

It was the start of a Parliamentary career that would span 30 years and included periods in top posts when Labour was on both opposition and government benches.

This included its 'wilderness' years, sitting opposite Mrs Thatcher when she was at the height of her power.

"She was a formidable and it has to be said very divisive figure," Mr Smith recalls. "Personally, she was quite charming and kind to people. But that did not characterise her politics.

"The most effective speech I ever heard in the House of Commons was the one given by Geoffrey Howe, which precipitated her fall from power.

"It was an incredible speech. You knew that a political earthquake was afoot.

"Of course the Tories got John Major in and saw us off again in the 1992 election – even though we'd been widely expected to win."

But change was indeed afoot. And as one of the MPs who served through the New Labour era, Mr Smith also grew close to key party figures such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

Mr Smith became particularly close to Mr Brown, the former Chancellor and, later, Prime Minister, who he served under at the Treasury.

But it was Blair he met first in 1982, he said, when the future PM was canvassing for support to be Labour's candidate in Oxford.

"I went to the Headington Labour Club in Windmill Road and we were sitting in the bar area, waiting to be interviewed by members," said Mr Smith.

"There was this bright young fellow sat opposite me. He beamed a great smile, stuck out a hand and said 'I'm Tony Blair'.

"I ending up prevailing and Tony was later selected for Sedgefield. But the party also paired MPs in marginal seats in 1983 and I was with him. Later in 87 when I wrote my maiden speech, it was Tony I showed it to and asked 'is this alright?'"

Having suffered a shock defeat in 1992, the party was terrified of appearing complacent in the run up to the May 1997 election. "If anything, with the benefit of hindsight, we were maybe too cautious – so certain were we that victory could still be snatched away."

But they won by a huge landslide, with Mr Smith called up to serve in government, first as Minister of State for Employment and Disability Rights and then, in 1999, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was Work and Pensions Secretary from May 2002 to September 2004.

It was in these role Mr Smith had some of his proudest moments, as he presided over some of the biggest public service spending increases in health, education and overseas aid that Britain had ever seen.

He lobbied Downing Street and the Treasury to set up the Pension Protection Fund, which now has £6bn in assets and helped rescue the pensions of thousands of workers, and he lead work on the 'new deals' for the unemployed, also setting up the Disability Rights Commission.

"I came into politics to make a difference and those are a few things along the way where I have been able to", Mr Smith said.

He credits the electoral success and momentum behind New Labour's reforms to the partnership of Blair and Brown.

Mr Brown, who he worked with more closely, was a 'volcanic force of will'.

"Sometimes the volcano exploded," Mr Smith laughs, "but never at me. We always got along very well.

"Gordon was a very complex man and there was a gentler, personal side to him as well."

An example of this, he says, is when Mr Brown visited Oxford to present a long-service award at the Rose Hill Community Centre.

"At the same time, Lillian Cross, a lovely and very dedicated activist, was dying. She was in a care home in Sanford. And even though he was under pressure and busy and fielding media calls all the time, he took time to go and thank her. It meant an enormous amount to her – he was Chancellor by then – but none of it was publicised.

"He was personally more sensitive and kinder than his public persona indicated."

Sensing discontent at home in 2004, however, Mr Smith decided to quit the Government to focus on his constituency. This was only partly because of the unpopularity of the Government's decision to go to war in Iraq.

"I could just tell we had been losing ground for a variety of reasons. We'd been in government for eight years and in the local elections that year we'd lost seats on the estate to the independent working class association."

The decision proved prescient: His majority of 10,000 was slashed to just 963 by the Liberal Democrats in 2005 – but he scraped through.

In 2010 and 2015, he reversed the trend and eventually grew his majority to 15,280 – over half of the vote.

He is optimistic about the current state of the Labour Party. "I think comparisons with the 80s are a bit superficial," he says. "With social media and the digital age, there is much more happening from the bottom-up in politics. It is certainly less predictable and it's interest to see the positive appeal of many items in the manifesto that wouldn't have been in previous decades."

He also has no regrets about being the MP who helped Jeremy Corbyn over the line in the nominations for the leadership in 2015.

Mr Smith did not vote for Mr Corbyn but, along with others, argued he should be in the competition to broaden the debate.

He said: "I don't think you can just shut off a certain current of opinion with manoeuvres to stop them getting nominated. And if it hadn't been me, there were about three other MPs ready to nominate him – and they were further to the right than me."

Looking back over his time as MP, Mr Smith hopes it is his relationship with constituents that defines his record.

He was particularly grateful to the outpouring of support from the public when his wife Val died in 2015 and, currently, there is a huge number of cards on display in his house in Blackbird Leys wishing him a happy retirement.

"I tried to never forgot who put me in Parliament," he says. "It was the perspective of people I talked to in Oxford who always helped to form my opinions. And I'm very proud to have been able to represent them."