'It’s not just about playing the game, it’s about what you want to achieve' - Katherine Fletcher MP on her journey from South Africa to Westminster

“Working in politics is not glamorous - I know everyone perceives it to be glamorous, but it’s not,” says Katherine Fletcher, the new Conservative MP for South Ribble.

Since being elected in December, she has been holding her surgeries in Tesco, in Leyland, waiting for her office to be set up.

Prior to her election, she owned her own furniture business and has also worked in social care and as a field guide - as she explained, essentially a ‘safari ranger’ - in South Africa.

But she never thought she would become an MP.

She says: “I didn’t even think about joining a political party until about six years ago.

“I’m from a completely normal family, the only thing they ever did with politics was vote and I didn’t really find out how my parents voted until I joined a political party.”

She was born in 1976 in Wythenshawe, Manchester, and when she was working in the south, she realised she wasn’t being “societally useful enough” and wanted to do something practical to advance the north.

She explains: “I’m a proud northerner and I was working down south and I realised the great disparity, so I got all the manifestos and picked the one I disagreed with the least - if anyone says they agree with every single word said by their party leader, they are lying.

“But politics is a team sport - and team work is necessary to achieve change.”

To people who would like to follow a similar career path, she says: “It’s not just about playing the game, it’s about what you want to achieve.

“Go out and get experience, and understand for what purpose, as well as just having an interest in the system, because the two together are then very powerful.”

Ms Fletcher indeed believes that the experiences she had before joining politics shaped her understanding of society and gave her a clear purpose when she decided to become an MP.

About her time working as a field guide in South Africa, she says: “Living in South Africa, you have a lot of profound realisations about nature and our race - but you also can’t live in South Africa without realising the horrors of an apartheid system.

“I loved the experience, it was very formative for my personality - but ultimately what South Africa gives you is an appreciation for how completely marvellous Britain is and how it’s really important to fight for it.”

When debating the Assisted Dying Law, in the House of Commons, in January, she stood up and said that she paid her way through university by working in a care home for old people and that those were her friends.

She witnessed some of them asking for “a death that no one could give them” and families trying to “bump them off for the money,” and in the House of Commons, she asked for legislation to protect their rights.

She explains: “I’m not from a posh background, so the only way I could afford university was by working.

“I was pretty much living in this care home to pay off my overdraft, and there was a lady there who could remember the Titanic sinking.

“It gave me a great grounding in the reality of health and social care but as a teenager it also gave me access to amazing people who had stories to tell.

“It was hard work, it was emotionally demanding - but that’s why I described them as my friends, because some of the stuff they could tell you was just amazing. But the worst part was when you came back the next term and they weren’t there.”

The MP is proud of belonging to the party which generated the only two women Prime Ministers, and she thinks politicians should address the structural issues preventing women from entering politics on genuine merit.

When Ms Fletcher was elected, in the December General Election, the UK elected a record of 220 female Members of Parliament: the proportion of women MPs in the House of Commons reached 34 per cent, the highest portion of either chamber in Parliament to this date.

She says: “We are all there because we are good enough to be there, there were no ‘all women shortlists’ and it gives you confidence to step forward in meetings. I can stand in that room and know that I’m there on my merit.

“If I think about what has actually changed, it is that the lads have changed.

“I share an office with Andy Cater, who’s the new Warrington South MP - he doesn’t care that I’m a woman, he just cares that I’m an MP, and I’m a North West MP and I’m going to advocate for infrastructure improvement and the Northern Powerhouse.”

In the House of Commons, she proudly wears a Northern Powerhouse badge, as she was involved in the early stages of the project.

The 44-year-old explains that she invested a lot of time and resources in helping to set up the project, which is “the government’s vision for a super-connected, globally-competitive northern economy with a flourishing private sector, a highly-skilled population, and world-renowned civic and business leadership.”

She says: “We are held back from delivering for the British economy by practical stuff - it is holding us back from opportunities and from generating modern business.

“We are marvellous, and if we fix some of those problems, we can return much greater amounts of money to the British economy.

“We are not perfect, but we are marvellous.”

The first time Katherine Fletcher spoke in the House of Commons was during a Treasury debate, when she advocated for support for small businesses in South Ribble.

She admitted she was quite nervous: “I did get to the end of the question and I didn’t so much sit down, but rather managed the collapsing of my knees. It is daunting - but it’s the opportunity of doing good that makes your knees collapse.”