‘Lazarus Lynch’ is becoming an expert in getting elected to Commons

HOLLY LYNCH’S summer has been dominated by meetings with fishermen, reading up on Britain’s waterways and familiarising herself with the needs of coastal communities.

The reason? Following Jeremy Corbyn’s post-election minireshuffle, she was offered a role as the party’s Shadow Defra Minister.

When she learnt that her portfolio would include responsibility for flood policy, she decided that taking on the position “made perfect sense”. But speaking to

she admits that juggling front-bench responsibilities with her caseload as an MP “can be a big challenge”.

“Taking on any front-bench role is difficult, because it’s almost like doing a full-time job in addition to the full-time job you already do as a constituency MP,” she explains.

“When I was asked if I would be interested in becoming the Shadow Floods Minister, obviously for us in West Yorkshire flooding has been such a massive issue, so that made perfect sense.

“But it’s quite a broad Defra role – I deal with all water essentially. So that’s water quality, our rivers, stream canals, as well as coastal communities and our seas and fishing.

“Fishing is going to be something that’s very complicated as we go through the Brexit negotiations, so I have spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks making sure I’ve been out and about, meeting with the fishing industry, meeting fishermen and women working in that sector, so that I can represent their views.”

The new role is not Ms Lynch’s first shadow front-bench position.

Three months after she was elected to Parliament in 2015, she was offered a job as an opposition whip.

She held the office for just over a year – a year that turned out to be one of the most eventful in recent political history.

After experiencing the death of one colleague, the brutal murder of another and a leadership coup, she made the decision to stand down and focus on her constituency work.

“It was a really big year and difficult in many ways,” she says, when asked what kind of toll this took on her.

“On the very first day I became a whip, I remember [Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough MP] Harry Harpham coming to see me to tell me he had just been diagnosed with cancer, and he didn’t really know too much at that stage what the prognosis would be. I think Harry died three months after we had that conversation.

“As Harry’s whip, what’s difficult in a personal way is that you know Harry and it came as a shock how quickly he deteriorated.

“But also you’ve then got to work very closely with Harry’s staff and Harry’s family to try and support them.”

Four months later, the murder of the Batley & Spen MP Jo Cox shook the country and the political establishment to its core. As Mrs Cox’s whip, Lynch became the supervising MP for the constituency.

“We followed that almost immediately with the European referendum and followed that almost immediately again with the vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn,” she continues.

“So all in all it was the steepest possible learning curve coming into politics.”

Ms Lynch’s journey into professional politics began with a job as a research and