STUDENTS at New College have been urged to stand up and be counted in the political debates of our time.

In the last of a series of visits by speakers from across the political spectrum, Justin Tomlinson told the young audience that they had to challenge their representatives to deliver on the issues that mattered to them.

Now the MP for North Swindon, Justin's own involvement in politics started in surroundings not too dissimilar from those of New College.

As a 15-year-old schoolboy in Kidderminster in 1992, he contested a mock election as the Conservative candidate at a school where support for Labour was so strong that teachers were encouraging kids to take the day off to hit the campaign trail.

He lost. In fact he only got two votes and one of them was his own.

"I'd not only lost, but I'd lost to the son of the people who lived across the road from my mother," he told the New College students.

"But I loved it. I loved the campaign and I told my teacher I wanted to be an MP when I was older. He said: 'Justin, you have no chance.'"

Fast forward 25 years and the once-defeated schoolboy has had quite the turnaround in his electoral fortunes.

Elected as the MP for North Swindon in 2010, he was successful again in 2015 and was returned to Westminster for a third time in 2017.

But how much of a role have young people played in those victories, indeed are they even aware of them?

A show of hands in the New College theatre suggested that most of the audience thought politics was "boring" and only a few found it "genuinely interesting"..

Only a few said they felt "genuinely represented" by politicians, yet in a sign of the disconnect in the system, even fewer had ever contacted a politician to ask them to do just that.

"Normally the good people of New College assume all politicians went to Eton," Justin said to the students, in a bid to bridge the gap.

"But I went to a school called Harry Cheshire High School, it was so bad that two of my best friends went to prison.

"If you want to get into politics, you don't have to go to Eton."

After school, Justin headed off to university at Oxford Brookes before getting a job as a nightclub manager.

"That's what brought me to Swindon, he said. "My mother was horrified.

"I spent two and a half years doing that then I ran my own marketing company."

But had it not been for a wild and unruly hedge in the garden of his Swindon home, it's possible that he would never have got involved with politics in the town.

"Nevermind world issues," he told the New College audience. "Never mind the stories that fill the papers, it was an overgrown hedge by my house. Outrageous."

But get involved he did, first being elected to serve as a councillor at the age of just 22.

"I won at the Oasis, I signed my name and they told me to come down to the council on Monday," Justin recalled. "My first question to them - 'where is the council'?"

For two years he said little in the chamber and would shudder at the prospect of a live radio appearance.

But the confidence came, and with it the opportunities, until three years later with the 2005 General Election looming, Justin was selected as the Conservative candidate for North Swindon.

He walked away defeated but buoyed by the significant dent he had made in his opponent's majority.

Another five years later it was a different story.

"It was an amazing feeling," he said. "After all those years of work, having never studied politics, having been told at school I would never be an MP, I was going to go and represent the town that I lived in.

"I was incredibly proud. Again I had to ask where to go. But even now, after seven years of being an MP, I still pinch myself every day.

"I get 100 to 300 emails, telephone calls, facebook messages or tweets a day. We get filmed every time we speak in parliament. If you make the slightest mistake then at 2am someone will tell you, in CAPITAL LETTERS, what it was.

"But I love it, I wouldn't swap it for anything in the world."

But what was Justin's message for the youngsters in the room who had already shown their scepticism about politics?

"You have to engage," he urged them. "As you become the next generation of voters you have to contact your representatives. Tell us what it is you like. Tell us what it is you don't. You need to give us suggestions and you need to challenge us.

"If you think your MP has done a good job, then come out and vote for them.

"But if you think we've done a rubbish job then either vote us out, or stand yourself.

"You don't have to be a gifted, polished, public speaker. You don't have to know every nuance of every policy. But if you care, if you give a damn, then give it a go.

"Get involved. There is no reason why any one of you could not be an MP one day too."