Sarah Pochin won Runcorn and Helsby for Reform UK in a political earthquake (Image: Adam Gerrard / Sunday Express)
Forget weight-loss jabs. The best way to shed a stone is to stand in a by-election. This is the advice of Sarah Pochin, who won the Runcorn and Helsby contest this month for Reform UK by a mere six votes. "I lost a stone in weight," she laughs. "It’s the honest truth."
Her victory after weeks of pavement-pounding and doorbell-ringing is a frightening blow for both Labour and the Conservatives. Labour will be worried that Reform has taken one of its safest seats in a by-election triggered after sitting MP Mike Amesbury punched a constituent to the ground. Reform has huge ambitions to snatch swathes of traditional Labour territory out of Sir Keir Starmer’s grip.
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The presence of Ms Pochin in the Commons and on the nation’s airwaves will also scare the Tories. She is a cockapoo and labrador-owning former magistrate who grew up in a Thatcher-loving household and once served as a Tory councillor – but she has decided Nigel Farage’s party offers the best hope for Britain.
“Reform is the party of the future,” she declares with her trademark enthusiasm. “I left the Conservatives five years ago because even then it was quite clear that what they were best at was destroying themselves.”
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Despite the narrowness of the victory, she says she “always really believed that we were gonna win”. Her team opened a campaign office in a shopping centre and she claims on some days around 50 members of the public would drop in.
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There was a “very, very powerful feeling,” she says, that people felt “disenfranchised” by the traditional parties and “wanted someone else to vote for”.
She remembers a festival atmosphere seizing Runcorn on the sun-drenched final day of the campaign.
“Politics in this country has been missing that enthusiasm, has been missing that energy and people are so inspired now by this party that it’s an absolute joy to be part of this movement,” she says.
Two big issues came up on the doorstep – immigration and the challenge of making ends meet. People who had voted Labour in the past, she adds, felt particularly “betrayed” on the cost of living.
“Whether that be the removal of the winter fuel allowance, whether it was the slashing of disability benefits, whether it was the cost of energy... Their core voters feel very betrayed by what they’ve done in 10 months.”
The strength of support for Reform is demonstrated in the latest Techne polling which puts the party in first place on 29%, ahead of Labour (22%) and the Conservatives (18%).
Last Monday the Prime Minister ignited controversy in his own party when he launched the Immigration White Paper. He warned that without fair rules in place Britain risks “becoming an island of strangers”.
Nigel Farage celebrating Sarah Pochin's six-vote victory over Labour (Image: Getty Images)
Keir Starmer is 'talking waffle'
Ms Pochin doubts that tough talk from Labour will win back voters, saying the PM’s words are “piffle and waffle” unless the country pulls out of the European Court of Human Rights.
“I think we have to credit voters with a bit more understanding,” she says. “They know that unless we come out of the ECHR nothing is going to happen.”
The interview takes place at Reform’s HQ in Millbank Tower – a Thameside skyscraper which has near-mythic status in British political history. It was here that Alastair Campbell and his comrades ran Labour’s campaign in the run-up to the 1997 election landslide.
Today, Reform’s office is buzzing with young staff who want to stage an even more dramatic transformation of UK politics.
“It’s quite clear that we have really rattled Labour,” she says. “Quite rightly so.
“They should be more than rattled. We are coming for both parties.”
She suspects Labour will renege on its commitment to lower the age to 16 in order to stop teenagers voting for Mr Farage’s party.
“The youth, they flock around him,” she says. “Out of nowhere on housing estates, you’d get the 16, 17, 18-year-olds [asking], ‘Nigel can we have a selfie?’
“They love him and I found that fascinating because never before in the 10 years I’ve been very active in politics have I come across the youth so engaged, so enthused by a party leader. That is extraordinary.
“I tell you one thing, I think Labour will back right down on giving 16-year-olds a vote because their vote will go to Nigel Farage.”
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Sarah Pochin at Reform's Millbank Tower HQ (Image: Adam Gerrard / Sunday Express)
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'The Conservatives are finished'
Her journey towards Reform began a decade ago when on a cold and wet evening she went to see Mr Farage speak to a packed audience in Cheshire.
“What fascinated me then – as it still does now – is there was every type of person, every age, different backgrounds,” she remembers. “You could just see from looking across the room he was talking to the British people.”
She grabbed a word with the arch-Brexiteer who “in true Nigel fashion” was “on the back doorstep of this club with a cigarette and a pint.”
Her dad was a warrant officer in the Army and her mum worked in the Post Office. The pair were “huge Margaret Thatcher fans” and their “kitchen table was always piled high with Conservative leaflets”.
But today, their daughter says: “I think they’d be voting Reform and they’d be behind me every step of the way... People like my parents would be in despair at how far we’ve gone down the woke agenda and we need to rein it back in to something sensible.”
Ms Pochin was educated at Haberdashers’ Monmouth School for Girls. She describes her mother and father as a “classic example of parents who worked hard” and “put the money they had into my education”.
“Surely all parents’ desire is to improve the next generation?” she says. “I feel the same way about my children because that is how we improve society.”
She worked for companies including energy giant Shell before serving as a magistrate. Despite coming face to criminals and joining a party known for a hard line on law and order, she does not come across as a member of the hang-em and flog-em brigade.
“I have seen every type of person you can imagine over 20 years that have got themselves in every type of pickle,” she says.
The experience gave her “huge compassion”, and she was particularly moved by children who would turn up in court without any parents.
It also opened her eyes to the challenges facing many people in modern Britain, some of whom make bad choices.
“In order to even get onto the first rung of the ladder as a functioning adult in society you need a job and you somewhere to live,” she says. “Now, so many people don’t have those two things or even one of those two things.”
In the 2017 election she stood for Theresa May’s Conservatives in Bolton South East but grew disenchanted with the Tory machine.
“I got quite close to what was going on in the centre of the Conservative party and it’s toxic,” she says.
Claiming it is “irrelevant” who leads the Conservatives into the next election, she adds: “The Conservatives are finished... They are the minor party now.
“We are the party of opposition. We might only have five MPs but we have the whole voice of the nation behind us.”
She is confident she will be joined on the Reform bench by more MPs as a result of by-election wins during the remainder of this parliament. And she says she is sure Mr Farage can become the country’s next prime minister.
“I wouldn’t be sat here having turned my life upside down and my poor husband’s life upside down if I wasn’t absolutely committed to that mission and we will do it,” she says.
Her husband, Jonathan, works in the construction industry. They have two adult sons and two dogs – a black labrador, Orla, and a cockapoo, Lola.
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Sarah Pochin is sure she will not be the only Reform candidate to win a by-election in the coming ye (Image: Adam Gerrard / Sunday Express)
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Sarah Pochin with Nigel Farage, shortly before being sworn-in as a new MP (Image: Getty Images)
Friends and family were not surprised when she had a second go at getting elected as an MP.
“They’ve always known that I wasn’t finished really with this game,” she says. “And in fact, now I suppose ' I’m just getting started .”
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She has lived in the political spotlight since she was chosen to stand in the by-election. And attention has only intensified since she netted the half-dozen votes needed to oust Labour.
“I do know my husband thinks he sees more of me on the television at the moment or in the papers than in real life but I’m sure that’ll die down,” she says.
She has made history as the first woman to win a Westminster seat for Reform. But if the party holds its top position in the polls an even greater order of change may be on the way. Sarah Pochin could soon be a household name.