David Johnston became the new MP for Wantage in December's election, just a year after deciding to enter the world of politics.

Having lived in London, he and his partner Charlotte now have a house 'in the Didcot area'.

It's certainly a change of pace.

Mr Johnston says: “It’s nice to just immerse yourself in a different community – I spent most of my life in London.

“There’s much more of a community spirit than you often get here in London and so far, I’m really enjoying it and just trying to get to as many events and local things as possible.”

Mr Johnston took an alternative route into politics: instead of years politicking, he became an MP in just one year.

He studied Politics and History at Oxford University before working for and later becoming the CEO of the Social Mobility Foundation for 10 years.

Working at the national charity he helped disadvantaged young people to consider going on to higher education – particularly Oxford University.

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However, he later found himself surrounded purely by discussions of Brexit and he decided it was time to venture into the world of politics in hope of taking the focus away from Brexit and back to the issues he cared about.

He said: “I’d always been interested in politics and so a lot of my reading would be about it and I would watch programmes about it, but I don’t think I was ever sure I wanted to go into it.

“The epiphany moment for me was a year before the election, we were on a plane coming back from somewhere and I was reading the paper and the first 11 pages were all about Brexit.

“I had voted to leave but I could not understand how this one issue had taken over all attention in politics in the media. How people who had not been obsessed with the EU before, on both sides by the way, had become obsessed by it.

“I thought all of the issues that I care about that affected the family I grew up in, that affect the young people we help in the charities I’ve been working in, were just being ignored for this one issue and that was the moment.

“Honestly, it was November 2018 where I thought actually, I want to try and get into politics so I can be one of the people who tries to get it back to people’s lives. People were just allowing Brexit to dominate everything.”

With the next election soon scheduled for December 2019, Mr Johnston had less than 12 months to turn himself from a nobody into a serious contender.

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He said: “At the time I was trying to do this, I was thinking the election was going to be 2022, so I’m thinking actually I’ve got a three to four year run up to this.”

He added: “Your classic route into here is that you spend years politicking, you’re a councillor, you fight another seat, you are in a job where you can be overtly political. My story is quite an unlikely one: to, a year later, be lucky enough to be a Member of Parliament.”

Despite some stereotypes about Conservatives, this Tory MP is a champion for social mobility.

Having grown up on a London council estate, he is keenly aware of the barriers that face working class young people.

He said: “I have a big passion for social mobility, education and employment opportunities.

“I went to a school where, in five years, only 21 per cent of people passed any five GCSEs.

“I was born on a council estate, my mum left school at 16, dad at 14. I was the first person in my family to go to university.

“I felt that the entire time there were people who were as good as me and better not getting the same opportunities. I looked at a world where, in our top universities, people who are privately educated and have professional parents take a hugely disproportionate number of the places.”

Now in a constituency in the shadow of Oxford but with very different challenges, the MP is determined to make the area a better place for young people.

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He said: "I’m probably one of the few politicians that when I see young people hanging around a street corner with their hoods up, I will cross the road to go and talk to them because I want to know how they feel about the area.

"I want to know whether they feel they’ve got the opportunities they need and what they would the like to see happen."

Didcot has seen recent closures of youth clubs and problems with anti-social behaviour, and after moving to Didcot Mr Johnston believes this could be due to young people not having enough to do.

He said: "One of things people are worried about at the moment is pockets of anti-social behaviour.

"In Didcot at the moment, the Burger King is one of the places people are concerned about because young people are using it just to hang out. They are getting accused of anti-social behaviour and undoubtedly sometimes it is, but sometimes I think they’re just being a bit loud.

"I had my lunch in there a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t think it was anti-social behaviour I thought it was just boisterous young people. But that is symptomatic of us not giving enough activities for them to be able to do."

He added: "I’m really passionate about young people having productive things to do. I’m sympathetic to some of those [youth centre] closures although sometimes when you ask about how many people were using this service it can be really quite a low number, so I don’t think by itself it was solving the problem.”

Mr Johnston believes the constituency needs more houses, but wants to make sure the right infrastructure comes with it.

He said: “In terms of the constituency, no surprises the big thing for me is infrastructure.

“It is an economically successful area it has grown hugely. But we’ve built a lot of houses without the infrastructure to support them.

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“Now in principle I’m in favour of more housing because the country needs more houses and I think there should be certain criteria, it should be high quality. Because what I hear quite a bit about is housing chucked up very quickly with bad issues within that new housing, really low-grade stuff that people write to me about.

“It should be affordable, and it should be built in a sustainable fashion that supports our efforts on climate change and it should be built in the right places.

“I find that most people in the constituency are not opposed to more housing but what they would like to see is the infrastructure that supports that.”

On the topic of the South Oxfordshire 2034 Local Plan, Mr Johnston said: “I think the plan is really important for a number of reasons. One reason is that the infrastructure that will come with it is exactly what the constituency needs and so we need the science bridge we need the river crossing we need the cycle ways that will come as result of it.

“I recognise people’s concerns of overdevelopment, but the problem in the absence of a local plan is speculative development and the fact that people can build wherever they like.

“If you accept that houses are needed here, what you want to be able to do is to control where that housing goes and if you don’t have a local plan the developers will be all over the place.”

On the subject of another local bugbear, Mr Johnston says he will push for a debate in Parliament on both the A34 and A420 after wincing every time he goes on Twitter and sees yet another crash.

He would also like to see the opening of a new railway station at Grove but he does not promise anything.

He said: “Grove station is something that people have wanted for 40 years and I am hopeful we might finally make it happen, the fact that it has been for so long called-for means that the plan is much more than a pipe dream.

"All I have promised to do is to keep bashing away until such a time as it actually happens."