STEWART PATERSON

Political Correspondent

Someone should tell David Linden the election is over, he won his seat.

In fact they do. The new MP for Glasgow East continues to go round the constituency, knocking on doors meeting voters weeks after he was declared the area's Member of Parliament.

He said “One man opened the door and when I explained what I was doing he said ‘the election was two weeks ago, son’.”

However he has good reason for spending two hours a week treking up and down tenement stairs.

He said it was a pledge to keep in personal contact with people and not disappear to London never to be seen again.

Mr Linden has his roots in the constituency, brought up in Cranhill and schooled in the area at Bannerman High in Baillieston.

His first weeks in the job at Westminster have seen him tackle the Tory government on child poverty, Jobcentre cuts and a benefits bar for parents of terminally ill children.

He will be continuing with all three issues and more when Westminster returns next month, but he aims to be firmly rooted in the east end communities that make up his constituency.

Mr Linden said: “On the doorsteps, sometimes it’s uncomfortable. You might not like what they are telling you. They might have a gripe about the Scottish government or Westminster Government

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be there, maybe a few years maybe longer, hopefully not too long.

“But I’ve got to look myself in the mirror and say did I stand up for what people are telling me.

“And I don’t genuinely believe I can do that if I just spend four days a week down in a big bubble and a day here meeting businesses and organisations that want to lobby you.”

The 27 year-old said he didn’t expect to become an MP because it’s not a job people have where he is from.

He said: “I never at any point expected to get elected to Westminster. Although I’ve been involved in politics for a long time and started canvassing for the SNP when I was 11 and I’m now 27.

“I’m not from a conventional political background, I left school at 16 and was brought up by a single parent in a council estate. Wee guys like me don’t tend to get elected to the Palace of Westminster.”

The traditions and grandeur and old boys’ network of Westminster does not sit well with the man who grew up in the shadow of the Cranhill water tower now doing his work in the shadow of Big Ben.

He said: “I felt like a fish out of water down there.

“I went to an all-party parliamentary group meeting and a peer said to me you there, you’re one of the new Scottish MPs. You’re from Glasgow. Tell me, did you go to Hutcheson’s or Glasgow Academy?’

“There’s this idea that you’re expected to come from that background.

“We need to have people form the council estates as well as the land estates.”

Mr Linden said the recent debate about whether MPs should wear a tie in the Commons has left him angry.

He said: “If they show as much passion about social inequalities we would be in a better place.”

He will have party work to do at Westminster as well having been appointed to the SNP whip team which he said will be important in helping coordinate opposing the Tories.

He said: “There’s been an expectation we need to hit the ground running. Labour are starting to get their act together.

“In the last parliament they were all over the place, there’s still an element of that with the single market, but there’s a recognition we need to work together to defeat the Tories.

“We will work with as many people as possible to do that.”

In his role as researcher to Glasgow central MP, Alison Thewliss he was involved in campaigning to save the Jobcentres in the east of the city.

He will be taking up the baton and wants to bring the cabinet minister to the area and has already formally invited Prime Minister ,Theresa May, to come to Easterhouse and see the “burning injustice” of poverty for herself.

He added: “A constituency like Glasgow East with a lot of health inequalities a lot of focus will be on welfare system or social security and none of that is helped by the decision to close two of the three local jobcentres.

“They are going to close Parkhead and Easterhouse and create a super Jobcentre in Shettleston and that’s going to impact on the folk who use the one in Shettleston.

“The east end has been absolutely hammered by the Tories on this. “

He is determined to make not just his but his constituents voices heard at Westminster.

He said before his first question and speech he was nervous.

He said: “You will be heckled, particularly if you ask about child poverty because the Tories seem to think there’s no problem with it.

“But there comes a point where you have to overcome the nerves and think I have a mandate to be here.”

His mandate is from the people he grew up with and their families.

And his trips up and down tenement stairs in east end streets is designed to ensure his mind doesn’t stray too far from the needs and wishes of those very people.