It took him two goes, but Rodbourne Cheney councillor Will Stone has been selected by North Swindon Labour party as the candidate to fight the next election in the constituency.

As things stand Mr Stone will be campaigning to unseat the incumbent Conservative MP Justin Tomlinson and also battling the Green candidate Andy Bentley.

His selection comes just a few weeks after the constituency party selected a different candidate, Chris Lloyd, who is a councillor in the London Borough of Greenwich. Mr Lloyd stepped down after a couple of weeks saying he couldn’t reconcile the needs of the candidacy with work and family commitments.

Mr Stone said he was delighted to have been selected by members of the constituency: “It was a bit different this time, it was just a couple of weeks after the shortlisting and it was all on zoom rather than in person, but it was the members of the constituency who selected me.”

Elected as a councillor for the first time in May last year, Mr Stone says his campaign has already started despite it being up to two years before the next general election.

He said: “When I became a candidate for the council, even before I was elected I thought it was best to act as if I was already the councillor, so I started trying to help people and get things done from that point.

“It’s the same here. I want to get things done.”

Mr Stone said he does not have long-held political ambitions, but it has been a step-by-step process to becoming the parliamentary candidate: “I wasn’t that inserted in politics when I was young – I joined the army and did that.”

Since leaving the army Mr Stone, who runs his own martial arts gym and teaches Brazilian jiu-jitsu, became involved in community activism and got the bug.

He said: “I really liked getting things done so went into to political campaigning, then was elected councillor and now this.

“I’ve already started work as if I’m elected.

“As an MP you can introduce private member’s bills but the main thing you can do is  lobbying, and banging the drum for Swindon.

"I’d want to see a university established in Swindon and I think we have the capacity to be a hub for green manufacturing.

"Under Labour’s New Green deal we need to increase our manufacturing of green energy technologies; solar panels, wind turbines, things like that.

“We have the space here in Swindon the workforce and the history of manufacturing new technologies – it’s something I really want to help drive.”