Introducing… Chris Loder, Conservative MP for West Dorset

His first week in Parliament in December 2019 may have been a “baptism of fire,” but Chris Loder’s early experience of life as an MP was nothing compared to the impact of Covid, which hit three months later. Likening the subsequent 15-months to being a “firefighter, non-stop,” the learning curve since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak has been, he says, “immense”.

Local boy Loder – who still lives on the tenant beef farm his family has held for four generations – secured the largest-ever Conservative vote-share in his constituency of

West Dorset, and puts his electoral success down to being a “complete contrast” to his predecessor, the Remainsupporting Eton-educated Oliver Letwin: “[Letwin is] a brilliant intellectual, brain the size of a planet. And then you’ve got me, a farmer’s son from Sherbourne, who has probably got what the area needed at the time.”

A former head of new trains for South Western Railway, Loder worked his way up from a train guard to overseeing the Waterloo station upgrade programme. He has brought his experience to bear as a member of the Transport Select Committee and is also chair of the South Western Railway APPG, and vice-chair of the Rail APPG.

Tipped for greater things by some of his parliamentary colleagues, Loder puts his political awakening down to his experience of being made redundant during the economic crash of 2008. It prompted the former assistant verger, bell ringer and parish clerk to take a keener interest in politics. He joined the Conservative Party, and served as a local councillor from 2013 to 2015.

Describing the experience of picking up his parliamentary pass on the day he was elected as a powerful and moving experience, Loder is eager to get his parliamentary career back on track. “For me and my [2019] colleagues, we’re going to have to learn again,” he says. “We’re going to have to start from zero.”